bug in my bonnet

Let's just get brutally honest here and jump right into things:

I want to move to the Middle East.

I am bored with my life. 

I didn't even realize how bored I was...and then it just hit me this weekend. Bam. Bored. I'm so over it.

Kelly's Korner was hosting another blog carnival on Friday, this time to feature international bloggers. At first I thought it was a boring idea. Then I noticed that a few of the girls who linked up were American expats living in the Middle East. Then I started reading their blogs (Far More than Rubies and The Acord Family). And by "started reading," I meant I've spent the entire weekend reading years of back-entries on their blogs. Because to truly appreciate their relatively new lives in the Middle East, I felt like I needed to get to know them when they were just regular girls/couples/families in America, like me/us. So I've spent the weekend doing just that.

And I quickly came to the conclusion that the only antidote to my current boredom with life is to move there. To Saudi Arabia. Or Bahrain. Or Qatar. Or the UAE. Somewhere. Anywhere.

What am I bored with? Well, everything. I'm totally over our boring dead-end jobs. I'm bored that our whole lives revolve around said jobs, plus commuting and like...going to grocery stores. I'm bored with having nothing else to think about besides infertility. Sometimes I wonder why I never have anything to talk about with people. Then I realized it's because there's nothing in my life worth talking about. All people talk about are their jobs or their kids. I have neither. What am I supposed to talk about? Driving to Publix? Looking at Facebook? I'm just over it. We have friends and family, but (other than Matt's family) most of our interactions with them are through a computer anyway. So moving extremely far away wouldn't really change that. Laptops can go anywhere. I think I'm just disillusioned with the fact that even though sometimes I think my life is 'hard,' it's really ridiculously cushy and easy. From a global perspective, we've got it made. It's not that I want to go live in poverty or be persecuted. I just want...I don't know...a challenge.

Their lives...these girls whose blogs I'm reading... are HARD. Moving from the comfortable ease of middle-class life in America to Saudia Arabia is RIDICULOUS. Nothing about their stories seemed easy. I was actually incredibly stressed out reading most of the time. Overwhelmed. Mesmerized. Jealous. Their new lives are completely different. More complex. More stressful. But totally not boring.

I've been selling Matt on the idea. At first he was reluctant. "Why don't we just move to another state? How about out west?" No. It's too close. Too easy. Too much the same. "Well, what about Peru? Costa Rica?" Nope. Too Western. Women have too many rights. And I speak too much Spanish. I want total culture shock. Only the Middle East will do. I want to be able to complain about having to wear an abiya (the long black dress thing) and a headdress. I want to be grossed out when my neighbors slaughter a cow on the front porch. I want to be inconvenienced by a sandstorm. I want to live on the Arabian Gulf. I want it to be a four-hour adventure to get across a border to a grocery store where I can buy American food. I want to go to a house church. I want to be challenged. I want to have to work hard to survive. I want to have something new to think about.

I think I've convinced Matt. At least convinced him enough to spend the last 3 hours with me looking at jobs for Americans in the Middle East. :)

Oh, and did I mentioned that I studied Arabic in college? For three whole semesters. This basically makes me fluent in Arabic (HAHAHAHAHAHA). Or not. I think about all I remember is a few greetings and a few random words and factoids. But I do remember (most) of the characters and how to sound out words!! And I can write my name! That would put me at the literacy level of your average American kindergartner, haha. A good place to start at for my new life in the Middle East.

 So that's where I'm at tonight, folks. Tired of being an American. Ready for a change. I guess I should start by getting a new passport.

Maybe this'll all blow over quickly. Maybe it won't. At least it's giving me something new to think about. Maybe that's enough for now.

Or maybe I'll move to the Middle East.