My recent trip home has caused me -as more than one long time expat has said that it would- to go into a period of serous introspection. Seeing my home and my friends after more than a year of living in Beijing and, as a result, with a different perspective, has forced me to deal with some realities that had kind of crept their way into my life but that I’ve never had to deal with head-on.

 

During these days that I’ve been going through my life, taking inventory so to speak, one of the things that I have NOT been doing is questioning my decision to move to China in the first place.

 

I was surprised to take a look back at my blog’s history and not find one entry explaining why I picked up and left for the Orient. Surprised, because it’s one of the most common questions that one is asked as an expat- both here and by people at home. Of course, I’ve got a by-now-standard answer:

 

“I just woke up one morning and KNEW that I needed to move to China.”

 

Honestly, that is exactly how it happened. I remember the morning. I remember waking up with a start and I remember calling my best bud Josh almost immediately to tell him. Then, a day or two later at one of those rare times when Josh, Bry, Joe & I were all sitting around a table together, I told the other guys.

 

I told the rest of my close friends within several weeks (when we were all together at a pool party) and I was off to the races.

 

It was all really that simple.

 

Since that morning 3 1/2 years ago, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the reasons  behind my epiphany. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time there was obviously a lot more to it than just some miraculous revelation. A LOT more. While I had never given it any serious thought before that morning, my subconscious had been working on it for a long time and was pushed into action by a confluence of events that I didn’t quite understand until several months later.

 

First, and most importantly, I had been to China before. As I have mentioned in this space, I took 2 trips to Beijing & Hong Kong back in 1999-2000; once with Josh & Joe and the second time with Josh & Bry. Josh had lived in Beijing for several years back in the mid-90s and we’d had lots of conversations about his time here. More than once he had implored me to move myself. Then there was the ambitious plan to start up a China-based business with those guys. Finally, I had become good friends with Josh’s best buddy in Beijing, Alex, and he even came to visit me in Boston once.

 

So China had been on my mind a lot.

 

In the winter and spring of 2006 I was 3 1/2 years into my stint with old employer and it was growing very, very quickly. They were morphing into a different kind of company than the scrappy, wholesome startup that I had signed on with and I was in danger of being pigeonholed. I had just spent several months doing some of the best work of my life writing  a business plan for my team, because nobody in the new hierarchy seemed to know what to do with us. I worked closely with the other members of team and some folks from other departments. The result was an 80 page document that I am still incredibly proud of.

 

It was roundly ignored. This, along with a lot of other issues in the workplace, made it clear that the company was not a place that I could grow in and that staying there would lead me nowhere. But I was also faced with a dilemma: Once I had 5 years in with this company I would get a nice little bonus, as well as a 1 month paid sabbatical, on top of my regular 3 weeks+ of vacation. Basically, at the 3 1/2-year point you had to either leave or stick it out, as bailing after that point starts to actually cost money.

 

At the same time, Deval Patrick was getting his nascent campaign for governor of Massachusetts off of the ground. I was impressed by his message and was feeling the pull of politics on my heart strings. I hadn’t felt that engaged or passionate about politics since I had worked on a failed campaign for State Representative back in 2004, but the then-recent Supreme Judicial Court ruling making marriage equality a reality had stoked the fire in my belly. I was deeply involved in the fight to stop the decision’s repeal in the legislature and I was thinking that politics could, in fact, be my calling.

 

I got in touch with the Patrick campaign and asked about joining up. In the end, I was told that I could come on, but, of course, I would starting out at the bottom and would have to work my way up onto the writing staff… and, oh, by the way, there was no pay. And even if Deval won, there was no guarantee of a job in the administration.

 

Conceptually I had no problem with this, but practically it was a tough thing. I had already sacrificed 6 months of wage-earning for another campaign, and while I did not regret it at all, doing it again was a big leap to take. If I was going to do this it was going to be all-in and that meant full-time. If he lost, or if I couldn’t get a job after a win, I was looking at almost a year of making nothing and then maybe having to start all over again with a job search come  the following January.

 

I didn’t want to stay at my job anymore. At all. And I wasn’t really comfortable with starting in on the ground floor of a dicey political campaign.

 

Then, in the middle of all of this, I had my epiphany.

 

As I realized in the following weeks, the timing could not have been better. With the Olympics scheduled in 2008 I would have over 2 years to save up money for the move, use my regular vacation for a couple of pre-move trips to pick a place to live (it was a split between Beijing or Shenzhen), and then use my sabbatical for the move itself. I could enjoy the Games while still on my company’s payroll and then… just not come back.

 

All of a sudden I had a goal, a direction. I was on a mission. Enduring the crap that was happening in my office became a lot easier once I knew that I was just biding my time for a couple of years. And the urge to get back into the political arena evaporated almost completely.

 

There were other things as well. Some issues in my personal life all seemed to line up with the timing, as did my living situation. I distinctly remember that when I told my best friends at lunch that day it was as if a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. This was the RIGHT thing to do.

 

Since I have arrived there have been lots of other affirmations that this is the best place for me right now. The apartment that I found (and the crazy circumstances that forced me to find it), the job that found me, the people that I’ve met and the opportunities that I’ve come across… The list is endless. Frankly, when I think about it, I realize that I wouldn’t believe the serendipity of it all if I heard it told to me by somebody else. Even some long-lost family history that was revealed to me a few months before I left helped to make sense of my decision.

 

All of which I’ll cover in future posts.

 

I came to China because it was the right time for me to come here. And after my trip back to Boston, I am more sure of that than ever before. Now I just have to figure out what’s next.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Beijing, Boston, Friends, Moving, Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.