NEEDLING

DENIAL AND FAILURE

Each day brings me a little closer to the end of my stay in France. I’m starting to get nervous about it. Like the end of my contract at work, planned for the 8th of this month… well, I went ahead and pushed it till the 15th. As if that extra little bit of money was going to make any difference whatsoever. It will… I’m not in a situation where a couple hundred bucks doesn’t make a difference… but in the long run, extending my job an extra week only succeeds in pushing the date and time when I will have to deal head-on with the consequences of the decisions I’ve taken. Procrastination. Why do today what I can do tomorrow? Specially if it’s difficult and to a certain extent painful. The end of my job represents the beginning of the end of my stay in Paris, France. I don’t want to leave Paris, but I have come to the conclusion that my life will not get better, financially speaking for one, but also professionally speaking, if I continue to live here. That, apparently, the best I can do is be an underpaid, overworked hotel clerk. That is the extent of my accomplishments in this country. I have nothing against being a hotel clerk, I do however have a problem if being a hotel clerk is the only opportunity available for me. It then ceases to be a means to another job, or a step to further me in my little quests of daily life, and it becomes a constraint, a judgment call from society on me. I don’t mind not making any money, I only mind not having at least the hope that I could if I wanted, better myself in a professional manner, that I could envision to do something other than being a hotel clerk, that I could further my hopes of belonging to, or to be active in a profession which is more rewarding, not financially speaking this time, but intellectually and emotionally. That or those opportunities have either not been available for me in Paris, France, or I have not known or figured out how to make them available to me during my stay. Leaving is an admittance of my failure, to an extent. Extending my job one more week is one more week of denial where I do not have to face my failure head-on.