On Reconnection, or some of the reasons why I’m joining the Peace Corps

I am three weeks away from my staging date for the Peace Corps, where I will be subsequently whisked away from Chicago to a new life in the country Georgia for two years, give or take, doing organizational and community development work and (hopefully) having exciting adventures and meeting fresh faces! 

Admittedly, as of late I have grown rather complacent with life here in Chicago, preferring nights in my warm apartment watching Taskmaster Season 12 for the umpteenth time, finding a 20-minute-walk to my favorite Thai restaurant a little too far for my liking so I opt for DoorDash instead, hibernating instead of exploring. The winters here can really get ya.

But I am also three weeks away from leaving a beautiful city that I have been proud to call home for the past ten years, and the beautiful people that have made the city such a special home all these years. 

The thought of reconnection has always been a daunting one for me. In part, it feels like an indictment on some inability to maintain connection in the first place. It requires one to confront the fact that people, circumstances, perspectives, life changes. Too often in life, I default to some status quo of what I assume others expect of me to preserve connection. It’s a comfort I equate to the feeling of eating a microwaved frozen dinner. Satisfying? Perhaps not, but it does tide me over when I need it most. And oftentimes, things are just simpler when you allow life to gently take you along for its ride, like a plastic bag drifting through wind. (Who knew Katy Perry was going to sneak into this? I sure didn’t.)

However, with a deadline lighting a fire under my ass–who doesn’t love a good ol’ deadline?–I now have an opportunity to see my friends and my city with a set of fresh eyes and a different purpose. What will I miss about my good ol’ predictable life in Chicago when everything feels new and different? 

It’s taken a while for me to muster up the courage to participate in a trust fall into discomfort and the unknowns that come with change. To revisit old dreams, familiar friends, and well-trodden places with the understanding that not only they, but I myself have evolved. This week has been one of reconnecting substantially with friends and my community. It’s been a little energy draining as an introvert, but enriching and comforting to know that the relationships with colleagues, dance teammates, and even the new choir companions I’ve made this past year are perhaps not as fragile as I make them out to be in my head. 

I also try to take each step on the snowy sidewalks to my local grocery store or coffee shop, hell, even to the alley where I dump my trash, with just a little more awareness. As I sit here at the Dollop coffee shop a seven-and-half-minute walk from my apartment, it is now 4pm and I’ve spent the past half hour writing maybe twenty five words. Only the green residue now remains of my matcha in a kitschy “Go Get ‘Em, Tiger!” mug featuring the face of a tiger that looks almost exactly like that of my high school logo. The internet is shoddy at best and I’ve since had to use my phone’s data to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata while I write and think. It is one perfectly ordinary and perfectly unique moment that I may come to miss in the months to come. 

This whole Peace Corps journey has been a reawakening of a dream that I had in high school, the first time I was made aware of the organization. I recall pouring over blogs and articles about various volunteers’ experiences at 4am, tantalized by the prospect that I may one day see the world, taste the world, save the world! And then life came around and lightly slapped me on the face with the necessities of making a living! Gaining employable skills! Finding some stability amidst the hellhole that is a capitalist society! I’ve thought about the Peace Corps for over a decade at this point, doubting whether I had the skillset to be of use abroad and whether I had the resilience to make it all happen, until COVID came around and promptly reminded me that life was going to take me wherever it so chooses so I might as well grab hold of the steering wheel. So here I am getting in touch with dreams past with a little more purpose and skills, a little more sense of self, and a little more reckless abandon to pursue something I once didn’t dare to do. 

Change requires reflection, and so I hope this process of writing will ultimately allow me to better reconnect with all versions of me–past, present, and future–with just a little more intention.