Welcome to 2009

I have returned home to the Big Island after 19 days in Washington DC. The change in scenery and temperature have been filled with mixed emotions. The Vog has reasserted itself and continues to weight heavy on my lungs and thoughts. Normality has returned to the household as my roommates return to their separate quiet ways of picking up the threads of the daily routine.

I find myself confused by my trip to DC and my return here on the nature of community, my place here, or my potential return to DC due to financial problems and scholastic considerations.

Yesterday I learned first hand the Aloha spirit of the people who live on this island in how they embraced and cared for my roommate Randy after his injury and post-surgical recovery. His boss housed him in Kona after the surgery as he was unable to drive home. The boss's tenants in the downstairs ohana (guest house) have been looking after him and have been cooking him dinner. An email sent by my other roommate Corinne to our classmates regarding Randy's condition elicited a series of inter-student communications that resulted in one of our teacher driving down to treat him on two occasions and asking her church to pray for him. The church providing him with flowers and fruit from members' gardens in addition to their prayers. Another student contacted our herbology teacher who's vacationing on the mainland, who promptly called in a prescription to another student who then filled it from her private apothecary. Yet another student, who's car ended up breaking down got a ride from the beach by friends to Waimea to pick up the prescription and then was driven 40 minutes to Kona to be dropped off to see Randy and deliver the herbal prescription. The people of this island look after a perfect stranger, and take care of each other in a way that is awe inspiring to behold.

In the midst of this my little problems with trying to determine how I will subsist on this island really do pale in comparison to the grace offered by the island. I have a lot of things I need to repair in my life in the next four months - prior to the end of the next trimester - as I try to determine how to get from under a house payment back home, a loss of an income, tax problems, and health issues perpetuated by the Vog and my current depression.

I have been in a perpetual and spiralling vortex of worry, and anxiety over the realities of my situation, all of which have been of my own making, and only worsened by the economy, and a series of unknowable and unpredictable circumstances, and additional information which have occurred over the course of living here. The island has been giving me mixed signs - either its trying to kick me off, or its trying to keep me through the examples of the community that could exist here. Mostly its been giving me a stark contrast between my former life, the people, the place, the pace, the environment, the society, services, arts, cost of living, and all aspects of life. There is nothing that is familiar here, and I find myself tethered to my former responsibilities in DC which have the potential to reintegrate me back into DC - its familiarity, the community, and its many shortfalls.

Depression has firmly taken over my life since September. Conflict over staying or returning are driving me insane. The pro and con lists of either decision keep changing by the day. My former Fire personality has been subsumed the deep dysfunctions of Metal and Earth pathologies.

Steps involved in the resolution of my financial problems associated with my house include foreclosure, bankruptcy, or short sale, with inevitable consequences to all of the savings in my struggling 401K and other minor investments - essentially leaving me completely broke after all is said and done. With no income, and the possibility of a total loss of all savings has me facing the possibility of dropping out of school in order to return to work so as to pay for my mortgage - a mortgage on a house which was supposed to have been sold if not for the economy. To return to work full time to pay for a mortgage payment (regardless of what I'm getting for the rental of the property), plus rent in Hawaii would neither be possible to find on island, nor logical in lieu of the reason for my being here being attending school.

In addition to these concerns, insecurities over my current Masters program being the one that is right for me, versus a Five Element school back in DC further add to my confusion as to what the next steps of my scholastic career should be given the holistic education offered by the Five Element school, versus the more technical and less holistic approach offered through my current school, not to mention the possibility of abandoning the opportunity of a lifetime to learn a highly specialized technique of Japanese acupuncture only taught through my current institution.

Both schools teach and produce great acupuncturists, but the Five Element school I've seen has cultivated the integrative and holistic roots of the medicine its teaching. Its education embodies the dedicated stand for the direct creation of individuals who embody the medicine in body, mind, and spirit. Without the curriculum and the teachers standing for the transformation of the individual at the core level of their being, the quality of the practitioners seems solely dependent on the maturity of each individual, their individual predisposition and personal levels of development in what it means to be a healer and not the systemic and dedicated education by teacher-practitioners who are on fire to generate exceptional individuals out of this program and to literally transform the community as a result of their work. The Five Element school I've seen teaches the 'soft skills' (for lack of a better word) that to me seem to be at core of the efficacy of treatment and at the fundamental source of the medicine which first attracted me to this profession. The catch with the Five Element school - they require a bachelors degree - a degree which I do not require for the majority of TCM schools which accept only 60 credits. The possibility of needing to abandon this field of study for 1-2 years while I finish a bachelors in order to attend this school is painful to consider.

If I were to return to DC, I would need to get rid of my house in order to be able to go to school while only earning a living through a part time job to cover expenses. The only possibility of a job that I can see right now which would pay for the high cost of my existing mortgage would be
to return to my former employer, if they would have me, and negotiating a schedule that would permit me to engage in my studies.

To keep the house is to need a job. To have a job that will pay what I need to cover cost of living is to return to DC. To return to DC is to abandon Acupuncture unless the Five Element school will wave their Bachelors requirement (a narrow, but not entirely impossible possibility), or else study a completely unrelated Bachelors degree for 1-2 years just to get back into the school back home. To return to DC and keep the house and go to school is to consider the possibility of returning to my former workplace. To short sell the house is to ruin my credit and 14 years of 401K investments regardless of whether I stay in Hawaii or return to DC.

Collectively, these issues are creating fear, isolation, loneliness, confusion, frustration, and deep anxiety over what I'm doing here, whether this place is the place for me, anxiety over whether its not, and anxiety over what to do in either case.

Today after driving to Kona to pick up Randy from his doctor's appointment and drive his car back home, I've been reading a great book on the history of Reiki. Its reawakened my desire to get treatment. I've started the process of looking for a Reiki community group which would be willing to exchange Reiki treatments.

My problems and concerns will be here until they're resolved. Talking with my friends, family, and roommates has helped get these issues off my chest. I have a couple of next steps which I'm resisting doing, but I'll need to start embarking on them this month. I am praying for courage, faith, clarity, and luck.

School starts tomorrow.