I recently moved to Hong Kong. It wasn't something that I gave much thought to before it happened. I was a student at a university in a small town in the US. Lincoln, Nebraska, not exactly the hub of anything. I had a group of friends that I was quite fond of, a nice apartment, and absolutely no drive to do anything. I did well in school, although it required very little of my time. My social life was at the point where very little was required of me to maintain my present situation. The main thing that I had to worry or think about was the rare instances where I had an opportunity to meet some woman. Other than that, somewhere in the mist that was my future, I had the imminent threat of graduation.
I really made a quite lethargic choice to move to Hong Kong. There were many factors that decided it. One was that my good friend had also moved to some far away place to study for a year, and he seemed to be having a good time. I also looked enviously at how the prospect of my moving would be looked at amongst other people. I would seem quite exotic, and that was not an all together bad consequence. The opportunity arose simply because my parents had recently moved there so that my father could take a job. My sister and mother had both moved also, although I think that both of them were quite less enthusiastic about it all. Basically, those were the main reasons that lead me to make this decision which could very possibly be the deciding factor in my young adult life. I am not extremely proud about that.
I truly mean it when I say that in Lincoln I had no drive to do anything. Sure, I may be exaggerating some, for there were times when I would become enthralled with some task or activity. However, those times were rare, and at the longest lasted for the whole of a week. I silently hold as an excuse and a consolation to this lack of drive the possibility that my notion of drive is somewhat off from the understood definition. I always thought that some great thing would happen to me in my life; I would become some respected man in my field, or become some brilliant musical genius, or, my favorite choice, learn some dastardly way to make all women swoon in my general direction. But, alas, in my monotonous days in Lincoln Nebraska I began to realize that nothing like that would ever happen to me unless I dedicate myself to it. I found it hard to believe all my life I had thought that sooner or later I would find that one thing that I could throw myself into and become an expert at. I think I half expected it to just happen, with no notice and without warning. It most certainly would have been easier that way.
So, in my stagnation in Lincoln, I very insightfully realized that this monotony that I lived in was not at all the proper environment for what I wanted to happen. I needed a change, that was obvious, but I felt a very slight fear that opposed that change. A fear that all that I had, my routine, my friends, my life in general, would be put in jeopardy if I made that change. I don't even remember how many countless nights I sat and thought about it all. I quickly realized that all that I had been worrying about changing would most certainly change, and what was worse, there would probably be bigger repercussions of those changes which would actually turn into even larger changes in me and my personality. I simply had to decide if I was happy with who I was and what who I was would lead me to be. And like I said before, I recently moved to Hong Kong.
So I had made my decision. I would move from Lincoln, and my life would become some grand biography where transformation is made and a new person emerges and shatters the limits of the old. The actual move was months off so this is what my mind began to brood over. I found it quite sad to find that the one thing that I was looking forward to most was coming back and being the center of attention for brief seconds of bliss. Having all eyes upon me as I modestly told my stories of experience, too worldly to notice that everyone else sat looking, longing, dreaming of what I had lived. It was quite a nice prospect and single handidly carried me to within a month of my departure.
My life at the time was actually quite interesting, and all in all I would consider myself an interesting person. That is my opinion, I realize, and most certainly biased. I have reasons for what I say, though, and so that you can make up your own mind as to whether you agree with me or not I will elaborate on them. If someone were to live on the moon, and only see the general shape and main actions of peoples' lives, then I would imagine that they would find me very mundane. I was like most other people around me, I went to school, I had a job, I went out on the weekends to places most people went, just normal stuff. But it was the little things that I consciously dedicated myself to. The small things in my social interaction with people which I took over analyzed and meticulous care of.
I had a technique that I feel I perfected in the acquisition of goods. In particular goods which would be strewn around my apartment, way too carelessly to be random. Everything had a story to go along with it, I had even thought of writing a book in which I described that item, then I could just circulate it amongst newcomers and they could sit and read it while I sipped on a glass of tea. It was very contrived, and it encompassed nearly all the items in my house. The technique was designed to make me look interesting, to make people like me. To the best of my knowledge, it worked, but who knows for sure, the small impressions that it possibly made could either affect the way that people viewed me or not, I could never know. But I continued it and had quite a bit of fun doing it. I had a chessboard that my parents had gotten me in china, an easy way to bring up the subject. A shaker, one of the old 60's weightloss machines that had a vibrating strap that would shake your belly. That was intended to show people my quirky side and give them a nice chuckle. I had pictures that I had got on a trip to the good will which resembled a view I saw while in Jamaica, and a banjo with books of music to let them know I was attempting to learn, a small suitcase that I thought resembled the one Forest Gump had. Countless other objects were around my house that had some sort of value to them, conversational value at the least. Now they all reside in a 5 X 10 X 12 storage unit, and I tell myself quite humorously that I should condense it down to the size of a novel.