Life in Taiwan is made for Western kids in their early 20s. You marvel at being able to shop with beer in your hand; you party every weekend; you have no real responsibilities; you work, but not too hard; you don't know what you're going to do with your life in five years time and you don't care.
It makes going through a mid-life crisis all the more... challenging*. I feel like I'm regressing back to 21, except I'm doing more drinking and less gangeing. I haven't philosophized in months, the "me" that comes out here isn't that me, it's the easily-amused, frisbee-loving, go-go energy me. Which is fine, that's a good me... it's like the me that I would've been at 21 had I not been so agro and self-deprecating. But... it feels like a me without purpose.
This regression, and purposelessness, it's all part of the syndrome I've dubbed The Parenthetical Life. Living out here is akin to screaming into a hole in the wall. You can do anything you want, and at the end of the day/month/year, you can go home as if nothing ever happened. Because nothing counts. You live your life here in brackets, and there are no consequences.
When I was on my 2-year travelling stint, I met an Israeli girl, who offhandedly made the comment that travelling was "the fake life", which the self-righteous 22-year-old Me took great offense to. But looking back now, I absolutely agree with her. In many cases, for Westerners, Taiwan is a place for boys who don't want to be men**. My friends and I have decided the threshold is about five years. After five years, you either get out and grow up, or you succumb to being a boy forever. There are so many thoroughly messed up 30 and 40-something-year-old Western dudes here who are stuck in perma-adolescence.
The bright side to the bracket life is that if nothing counts, then there's nothing to lose. So, while this gives closet assholes license to be bigger assholes, it also means that all fears of failure are easy to put down. Here, you have no reputation to protect, no respect to be lost. You're annonymous, and so are your fuck-ups.
Again, there are pros and cons to this scenario. The con is, any yahoo can pick up a guitar and form a band, and if they're white, they will probably enjoy some small measure of success, no matter how shitty they are. All the people who would never get gigs at home, suddenly find themselves here saying "... I've always wanted to be in a band", and voila- Guitar Idol Rock Star with a small collection of adoring fans thrown in, gratis. Same goes for DJs.
Um, and same goes for writers, at least this writer anyway. I've always believed that, given the opportunity, I could write for a newspaper; that I was good enough. Now, I'm not so sure. I've recently started writing for the China Post, the "other" English-language newspaper (the one that nobody reads), Taipei Times being "the" English-language newspaper. What I've discovered is that I don't know how to write for papers- my writing style oscillates between witty mcshmitty blogisms and pretentious grad dissertations, with no in-between.
So, I reason, where else to hone my skills but here in Nowheresville, where nothing really matters anyway. HA! Who says mediocrity gets you nowhere! To be blunt, nowheresville or not, I have to make this count; I don't want to live in brackets. I have to believe that what I'm doing in Taiwan is going to count for something later on. The alternative is to believe that I'm out here spending yet another year skirting responsibility and dicking off with adventures, novelties and cheap thrills... and I don't like that version so much. I'd much rather say that I'm wasting time in a meaningful way. Although now that I think of it, aren't I always?
*I'm exaggerating, by the way. I'm not really going through a mid-life crisis. I'm just feeling especially neurotic this week.
** I would make these sweeping generalizations about the Western women here too, but almost all my female friends here are Taiwanese, so I'm my only example in this case. And it's true- I DO feel like a little boy
It makes going through a mid-life crisis all the more... challenging*. I feel like I'm regressing back to 21, except I'm doing more drinking and less gangeing. I haven't philosophized in months, the "me" that comes out here isn't that me, it's the easily-amused, frisbee-loving, go-go energy me. Which is fine, that's a good me... it's like the me that I would've been at 21 had I not been so agro and self-deprecating. But... it feels like a me without purpose.
This regression, and purposelessness, it's all part of the syndrome I've dubbed The Parenthetical Life. Living out here is akin to screaming into a hole in the wall. You can do anything you want, and at the end of the day/month/year, you can go home as if nothing ever happened. Because nothing counts. You live your life here in brackets, and there are no consequences.
When I was on my 2-year travelling stint, I met an Israeli girl, who offhandedly made the comment that travelling was "the fake life", which the self-righteous 22-year-old Me took great offense to. But looking back now, I absolutely agree with her. In many cases, for Westerners, Taiwan is a place for boys who don't want to be men**. My friends and I have decided the threshold is about five years. After five years, you either get out and grow up, or you succumb to being a boy forever. There are so many thoroughly messed up 30 and 40-something-year-old Western dudes here who are stuck in perma-adolescence.
The bright side to the bracket life is that if nothing counts, then there's nothing to lose. So, while this gives closet assholes license to be bigger assholes, it also means that all fears of failure are easy to put down. Here, you have no reputation to protect, no respect to be lost. You're annonymous, and so are your fuck-ups.
Again, there are pros and cons to this scenario. The con is, any yahoo can pick up a guitar and form a band, and if they're white, they will probably enjoy some small measure of success, no matter how shitty they are. All the people who would never get gigs at home, suddenly find themselves here saying "... I've always wanted to be in a band", and voila- Guitar Idol Rock Star with a small collection of adoring fans thrown in, gratis. Same goes for DJs.
Um, and same goes for writers, at least this writer anyway. I've always believed that, given the opportunity, I could write for a newspaper; that I was good enough. Now, I'm not so sure. I've recently started writing for the China Post, the "other" English-language newspaper (the one that nobody reads), Taipei Times being "the" English-language newspaper. What I've discovered is that I don't know how to write for papers- my writing style oscillates between witty mcshmitty blogisms and pretentious grad dissertations, with no in-between.
So, I reason, where else to hone my skills but here in Nowheresville, where nothing really matters anyway. HA! Who says mediocrity gets you nowhere! To be blunt, nowheresville or not, I have to make this count; I don't want to live in brackets. I have to believe that what I'm doing in Taiwan is going to count for something later on. The alternative is to believe that I'm out here spending yet another year skirting responsibility and dicking off with adventures, novelties and cheap thrills... and I don't like that version so much. I'd much rather say that I'm wasting time in a meaningful way. Although now that I think of it, aren't I always?*I'm exaggerating, by the way. I'm not really going through a mid-life crisis. I'm just feeling especially neurotic this week.
** I would make these sweeping generalizations about the Western women here too, but almost all my female friends here are Taiwanese, so I'm my only example in this case. And it's true- I DO feel like a little boy
