It has.
But also, I've been doing some stuff since April. I finished a Masters degree and I hosted my parents and my friends and I wrapped up my life in Iceland and I went on a worry-free, work-free vacation to Norway and I came home to the US for a few weeks and now I'm in Vietnam.
So.
I don't know how to do nothing, but it's kind of what I have to do right now. But before I talk about how I don't know how to do nothing, I'll briefly explain what's happening to me because it's all sorts of legislative.
My residency in Iceland expired on 15 July, and I used 35 of my 90-out-of-180 days of Schengen "tourist" allowance to stay in Iceland. But since Iceland is in the Schengen alliance, it kind of shuts out much of Europe for me for a while. I didn't want to use the rest of the 55 days because I'll probably need a few in December, and Europe can be pretty expensive anyway.
So, the solution would be to come home. But since the US doesn't have a double taxation agreement with Iceland, I can't. Because if I come home for more than 5 weeks during the year, then the US will claim tax authority over my Icelandic income, on which I have already paid (or will pay) taxes in Iceland.
I'm happy to pay taxes, especially in Iceland where they go to nice things like my education and health care. However, I don't want to do it twice.
So, I went to Southeast Asia: arguably one of the least expensive places on this Earth and with moderately consistent WiFi, I can continue my remote jobs and earn on the USD.
It's literally the most responsible thing that I can do, so I'm doing it and I'm doing it as well as I can. It's a working vacation, but it isn't. It isn't, because I have to actually sustainably live here until December when I'll take a flight from probably Kuala Lumpur to continental Europe and then to Iceland to pick up my winter things and then to Toronto and then home for Christmas, somehow.
A proper round-the-world trip, expedited version.
But I've also put off writing because the things that I'm thinking about lately aren't things that I really want to talk about. Mostly, I think, because I haven't solved any of them yet. And I can't, really. And since life is pretty much great, feeling lousy doesn't make sense. I feel whiny and then I feel worse.
It's the middle again, stuck between the Next Right Things. I'm trying my best and have been competing pretty well, but I haven't found a PhD program yet. This means I haven't found a salary yet, and I haven't found healthcare yet and that really frightens me every time I think about it because I've taken so many meds from Iceland that they wouldn't fill the prescription anymore. And when I run out of meds, I'll need to find some more, but it seems like a mountain I can't climb sometimes.
And my knees have started to give out, and my back, and I'm not even 28 and what if I can't even climb literal mountains anymore? I can't believe how much they hurt, the joints, the vertebrae. I'm glad for the mountains I have climbed so far, but I thought I had more time.
It upsets me to think about this, because I inevitably compare myself to people who are doing, or at least look like they're doing, much better than me. Much easier, it's unfair, it's impossible. And then I realize that I'm in the middle of a beautiful, mountainous place. Sometimes that's comforting, but sometimes it just makes me feel ashamed of myself.
I don't know what to do, so I try to find PhD jobs and work on little projects and catch up on things and pretend to rest. It's laundry day. I brought a bunch of Tide packets with me, and all they've done is explode in low-pressure cargo holds on the way here. The hostels here will do laundry for me, so I guess I just have a bunch of exploded Tide now.
You all know how much I love metaphors.
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