on seeing the world through cleaner glasses

What to write, I ask myself? After two weeks or so of keeping up this blog, it's hard to stay fresh and think of new ideas. The truth is, there's actually a lot going on, you just can't see it. Being alone has really brought me into a different mindset. I was scared, at first, at the thought of all this alone time and solitude. I'm beginning to realize that being alone is the best way of resetting your own personal clock and understanding why things are the way they are.

A good example of this came today, actually. First, at work, there was a discussion of the physical size of Gallup, which is very small. The population size also came up (~20,000). This topic arose because I asked about another health care facility within the Navajo Area Indian Health Service, called Chinle. The overwhelming agreement amongst my colleagues was that Chinle is located in a region much to remote to inhabit, and that because of this fact (and other factors, I'm assuming) is undesirable. I commented that I like how small Gallup is.  Then at the Wal-Mart this afternoon, I saw some girls dressed in fashions that may have been popular in the early nineties using their mobile phones to text their friends, and saying catty things to one another. A few things occurred to me, chief among them the support for my earlier theory that popular culture totally flew by this town for the past 50 years. Also, the desirability of a place to live and a lifestyle to live ultimately might can be pared down to personal relativity; that is to say that something might only be desirable or undesirable because of what you can compare it to. In addition to one's personal preferences, of course, but that's also influenced by one's experiences in life.  Many of the things I took for granted in DC are novelties here, and I've come to realize that a lot of it just complicates things in one's life.

Where am I going with this? Well, I came to the realization today that with everywhere I've been, and all the different places I've lived, I've kind of just wanted peace and quiet, but always got embroiled in something else that kept me away from peace and quiet. The noise of other people scurrying about can be deafening, and if you don't know how to block it out, then life can be a little difficult sometimes. It's very quiet here in Gallup, even when it's busy, and I imagine it's even more quiet in Chinle. I no longer feel like that's to be considered a negative.

I loved living in DC.  I made a lot of good friends, and it's a beautiful city.  At the same time, I also feel like DC kind of chewed me up and spit me out.  Living in the "big city" is great for some people, and I would never knock the merits of living in a major metropolis.  But I've lived in Annapolis, Berlin, Baltimore, DC, and now Gallup.  Even though I'm in the minority (race-wise) in Gallup, I feel closer to self-actualization than I've ever been before.  I know I'm generalizing here, but there's a lot of self-created drama amongst the middle class in large cities (myself included).  In Gallup, most people seem more occupied with more fundamental concerns (like how they are going to earn their next paycheck), and this offers a certain clarity of vision that perhaps is lacking in places like DC.

Maybe this is all symptomatic of a larger problem.  Mobile phones, cable TV, Facebook, etc; these are all things that we've embraced as a means of staying in touch with other human beings, and by extension, adding to our life's fulfillment.  In a sense, however, this keeps us from knowing ourselves better because we are so occupied with getting to know someone else.  Thoughts?