On the lack of a language-learning update.

I haven’t posted on my progress in Thai in a bit, and that itself probably deserves a bit of an explanation. The short version is that there hasn’t been that much progress. Roughly, I’d chalk that up to:

• Building footprints, and the time it’s taken up,
• Continuing mild awkwardness with one of my key language partners,
• A little bit of learning burnout, but more than anything,
• Ferguson, USA. Sydney, Australia. Peshawar, Pakistan.

As I noted in on making a life that fits you, one of the key characteristics about my life here is that it’s not filled, that I have space to unclench, to be vulnerable. To be able to engage fully with the world around me. As I wrote in a notebook the other day:

What if I had such limited engagement with the world that all of it could be full-hearted?

These days, I’m getting a taste of the hard part of that - each one of those experiences hitting me full, staggering me. Every moment, my mind buzzing, heart hurting, trying to work its way through to something. Maybe not hurting. Maybe sense. I’m not sure.

In a world like that, learning a language and travel writing and a super-cool publishing platform pale, seem fleeting and unimportant.

As a friend rightly pointed out, all of the big world change type things take time, and sustained engagement is the only thing that really does help. Even these writings, sharing a bit of “hey, over here, people are just like you and me, and worry and cry and laugh about the same things,” do a little good.

Do what writing’s supposed to do: give us back to each other.

The language, when it’s time, will come.