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poked hive
Apr. 30th, 2015 01:31 pmFor well more than 7 years, Ciro and I have intended to move to Italy sometime about now. We figured that after he graduated college (two years from when we started saying this, when I finished grad school), it would take about 5 years to wrap up some Private Family Business for which I preferred to be near my parents and in a country where I natively spoke the language. (My Italian comprehension is ok, but not when you get into technical and legal vocabulary, and my confidence when it comes to speaking more than nouns is nonexistent.) We've been really public about this - not online, because who cares, but in real life with people who might have their own plans impacted.
As forecast, we wrapped up the critical stages of Private Family Business in November, almost exactly when we guessed we would, and no longer need to be in Boston. So Ciro mailed his citizenship paperwork to an Italian lawyer cousin and enrolled in classes to get a TEFL certification, which he got in late February. He spent March sending out job feelers and updating his resume. The news he got back was basically that he should be able to get a job quickly, particularly if he's willing to work outside of the major cities, but needs to apply in person, ideally before September (when the school year starts). He had a bunch of doctors' appointments in April and we have guests throughout May, so the earliest he could go over to Italy to do that is June.
Tickets have not been bought and it could be later than June. Once Ciro does get over there, maybe he will immediately find a job in a place he likes, or maybe he will spend two months with people saying "we can't tell you until August," or maybe he will look for four months and find nothing and come back here and we'll talk about whether he needs to get experience teaching someplace in the States, or whether there's good-paying work in someplace interesting in South America, or what. Even in the fastest-case scenario where he goes over in late June and finds work almost the second he lands, he'd still need to find us a place to live and get moved into that place, after which I'd need to quit my job in the States and pack and ship whatever of our stuff is worth packing and shipping.
Basically, I feel pretty safe in guessing there is close to no chance I'm gone from here before August, so if people have made plans to visit during the summer I've said the more the merrier. Anything September or later, I'm not commiting to, because I don't have enough information to guess what my situation will be by then. Could be here, could be elsewhere; could be working or not working; could be who knows. I've said to people: September onward, don't depend on me, but don't depend on not me.
On Tuesday, my sister was in town for all of 12 hours. I don't want to say we're not close, because that implies we dislike each other, but we're not in each other's confidence. We talk at holidays, and otherwise on the phone for an hour maybe once every three months, mostly about books or art projects. I don't even know the name of the guy she's been dating for two years, and never met the guy she moved to Peru with (whose name I only found out after they'd moved to Peru). For the record, I'm not the type of friend you generally call to gush about who you're dating; I'm the kind of friend you call to strategize a breakup and be reassured you're killer.
Anyway, she asked me how the Italy timeline is going (because as stated I've been public about this for the last 7 years, and Ciro's TEFL certificate-getting process was in effect while she was visiting at Christmas). I said what I've been saying to everyone consistently, which is that I'm not making solid commitments past September but won't really know specifics until Ciro does, and he doesn't and won't for another couple months at least. Somehow - I'm guessing - this shifted in Mom's brain to "Romie has clear and definite plans and they kick off in September." I'm guessing this because for the last two days I've had to deal with a series of panicked calls from my easily panicked uncle about how I'm moving in a month and didn't tell him (because if Mom told him I'm definitely moving soon that means next week) and total strangers coming up to me in town to gossip about where (don't know) and when (don't know).
So I'm pretty pissed off, because:
(1) This is exactly why I don't like to tell people anything about my life until it's absolutely concrete. [Note that I don't tend to mention when I've finished writing a thing, or even when I've had a thing accepted by a publisher: I tell you when the thing is on newsstands. This is even more true offline.] I do not like to have to countermessage the expectations of people whose imagination is almost inevitably melodramatic.
(2) In this case I've been clear and consistent for seven years. I was telling people in London in 2009 where I'd hopefully be in 2016. At the dinner table throughout the last six months, Ciro and I have discussed (in English) each transitional stage we've completed and our estimates for the next one. During all or at least most of these discussions, Mom has been sitting directly across from me. She adjusted her schedule around Ciro's TEFL classes.
I don't know whether the lesson here is to lock down more and become absolutely secretive because nobody believes facts when I disclose them and it gives me false confidence that I've been listened to, or whether I need to host a daily White House briefing (which I already thought I did) and make sure each of my talking points is repeated back to me.
I get that people like gossip, but goddamn. When I'm trying to get something done that's kind of delicate and scary and ambiguous, I don't need to be grilled about it and I don't need to comfort peripheral players. I can see why it would be cool to know what's up, but asking me is almost exactly equivalent to asking an unemployed person when they plan to have a job. It would be so great if a sick person told you when they plan to get well or a healthy person when they plan to get a cold next, because knowing would make it easier to figure out how much kleenex to have around.
Maybe it's not REL; maybe it's that Mom heard me practicing Italian for an hour because Ciro's in Arizona and I didn't have him to hang out with during that hour. Probably "non ho capito" means "please arrange to collect all of my posessions tomorrow, never to be seen again."
As forecast, we wrapped up the critical stages of Private Family Business in November, almost exactly when we guessed we would, and no longer need to be in Boston. So Ciro mailed his citizenship paperwork to an Italian lawyer cousin and enrolled in classes to get a TEFL certification, which he got in late February. He spent March sending out job feelers and updating his resume. The news he got back was basically that he should be able to get a job quickly, particularly if he's willing to work outside of the major cities, but needs to apply in person, ideally before September (when the school year starts). He had a bunch of doctors' appointments in April and we have guests throughout May, so the earliest he could go over to Italy to do that is June.
Tickets have not been bought and it could be later than June. Once Ciro does get over there, maybe he will immediately find a job in a place he likes, or maybe he will spend two months with people saying "we can't tell you until August," or maybe he will look for four months and find nothing and come back here and we'll talk about whether he needs to get experience teaching someplace in the States, or whether there's good-paying work in someplace interesting in South America, or what. Even in the fastest-case scenario where he goes over in late June and finds work almost the second he lands, he'd still need to find us a place to live and get moved into that place, after which I'd need to quit my job in the States and pack and ship whatever of our stuff is worth packing and shipping.
Basically, I feel pretty safe in guessing there is close to no chance I'm gone from here before August, so if people have made plans to visit during the summer I've said the more the merrier. Anything September or later, I'm not commiting to, because I don't have enough information to guess what my situation will be by then. Could be here, could be elsewhere; could be working or not working; could be who knows. I've said to people: September onward, don't depend on me, but don't depend on not me.
On Tuesday, my sister was in town for all of 12 hours. I don't want to say we're not close, because that implies we dislike each other, but we're not in each other's confidence. We talk at holidays, and otherwise on the phone for an hour maybe once every three months, mostly about books or art projects. I don't even know the name of the guy she's been dating for two years, and never met the guy she moved to Peru with (whose name I only found out after they'd moved to Peru). For the record, I'm not the type of friend you generally call to gush about who you're dating; I'm the kind of friend you call to strategize a breakup and be reassured you're killer.
Anyway, she asked me how the Italy timeline is going (because as stated I've been public about this for the last 7 years, and Ciro's TEFL certificate-getting process was in effect while she was visiting at Christmas). I said what I've been saying to everyone consistently, which is that I'm not making solid commitments past September but won't really know specifics until Ciro does, and he doesn't and won't for another couple months at least. Somehow - I'm guessing - this shifted in Mom's brain to "Romie has clear and definite plans and they kick off in September." I'm guessing this because for the last two days I've had to deal with a series of panicked calls from my easily panicked uncle about how I'm moving in a month and didn't tell him (because if Mom told him I'm definitely moving soon that means next week) and total strangers coming up to me in town to gossip about where (don't know) and when (don't know).
So I'm pretty pissed off, because:
(1) This is exactly why I don't like to tell people anything about my life until it's absolutely concrete. [Note that I don't tend to mention when I've finished writing a thing, or even when I've had a thing accepted by a publisher: I tell you when the thing is on newsstands. This is even more true offline.] I do not like to have to countermessage the expectations of people whose imagination is almost inevitably melodramatic.
(2) In this case I've been clear and consistent for seven years. I was telling people in London in 2009 where I'd hopefully be in 2016. At the dinner table throughout the last six months, Ciro and I have discussed (in English) each transitional stage we've completed and our estimates for the next one. During all or at least most of these discussions, Mom has been sitting directly across from me. She adjusted her schedule around Ciro's TEFL classes.
I don't know whether the lesson here is to lock down more and become absolutely secretive because nobody believes facts when I disclose them and it gives me false confidence that I've been listened to, or whether I need to host a daily White House briefing (which I already thought I did) and make sure each of my talking points is repeated back to me.
I get that people like gossip, but goddamn. When I'm trying to get something done that's kind of delicate and scary and ambiguous, I don't need to be grilled about it and I don't need to comfort peripheral players. I can see why it would be cool to know what's up, but asking me is almost exactly equivalent to asking an unemployed person when they plan to have a job. It would be so great if a sick person told you when they plan to get well or a healthy person when they plan to get a cold next, because knowing would make it easier to figure out how much kleenex to have around.
Maybe it's not REL; maybe it's that Mom heard me practicing Italian for an hour because Ciro's in Arizona and I didn't have him to hang out with during that hour. Probably "non ho capito" means "please arrange to collect all of my posessions tomorrow, never to be seen again."
