self care – Nobles Family Blog

A few weeks ago I dreamed I got to talk with a former mentor about our falling out. I guess this has been lurking for years in my unconscious, along with low-lying shame about my lackluster legal career. In my dream I explained myself perfectly, my former mentor listened attentively, and she thanked me for sharing. Isn’t closure the best?

Except “closure” (like super thin eyebrows) is an outdated ’90s idea that only makes us look back in embarrassment. In the real world, I woke up at 3 a.m. to a minor existential crisis. To wit, what the actual hell am I doing in Hong Kong? Then came the spiraling: I don’t have a job. I don’t have a car. I don’t even have Amazon Prime. Everyone else has something to do here. What is the point of me? What’s MY path??

But I need to Eff-ing calm down because moving to Hong Kong is not a thing that just “happened” to me. I may feel like a fish in a strange pond or an uprooted plant, but I am not actually those things. Although I can’t deny the curious and strong deus ex machina that pervades my life, I have AGENCY. I made a choice – a conscious choice — to leave the United States and come to Hong Kong for two years. I spent months preparing, and cleaning, and moving pets, and trying to wrap up projects with clients. I cleaned out the basement, for crying out loud. I was EXCITED.

But the reality is that I just didn’t expect this to be so hard.

We have a saying in this family that “sometimes progress doesn’t look like progress.”

Some of the things we did this month that