Don’t complain; do something about it.
I made myself that promise only days earlier. I had heard about then promptly started the 21-day No Complaints Experiment to develop a stronger sense of ownership over my outcomes.
No more gripes and groans about what’s not been given. If it’s not turning out like I expected, then I need to communicate more clearly, be more patient, or look for a replacement.
Don't like it?
Change it.
I cannot control what feelings arise, but I control whether they're allowed in. I am the ultimate owner of my perceived pain, and I have no time for blaming others when I could be course correcting myself with immediate results.
Ram Dass, Michael Singer, Mark Manson and the like gave me the words to better understand my options. Layering them upon reflections of my life’s tragedies and traumas shaped the sword.
I don't wait to let Pain find me, I’m going to beat it to the punch. If it's hellbent on taking some one or some thing from me again, then I'm going to get that last hug in before they have a chance to go.
I’ve been operating with a pre-mortem mindset since 2004. If I saw the risk or writing on the wall and chose to do nothing about it, that's on me. Like Han Solo, I need to make my own luck.
Fitting—perhaps—that it is the last hour of Halloween night at time of writing, the US Election Day being only six sleeps away (well, technically seven given the New Zealand timezone where I live now), and I had just begrudgingly opened to NYT news app to get a whiff of what's to come despite knowing it'd do me no good.
I felt the disappointment I was expecting* to see (*confirmation bias doing the dirty work, as always). The thoughts that followed were nothing new.
“How did it get to this? How is the candidacy even a question? How are we going to recover from the storm to come? What if we don’t!?”
Of course, I had no better answers than I had yesterday or the past elections, four and eight years ago.
You see, I am an American expat who legitimately once thought the farthest I could move was the west coast of California; almost as if that was the edge of the liveable world (Sorry, Hawaii, we over on the contiguous east coast forgot you existed). I had flown to other countries in my youth, yet I was nonetheless indoctrinated into thinking those had visiting hours only.
Funny how things change.
Days prior, I hand-delivered my US Election absentee ballot to the local US Consulate in Auckland; trusting it’ll safely reach my county’s clerks ‘back home.’ One vote might not seem like it makes a difference, but that's only if you're looking at the short term impact. Zoom out and you'll see the shifting scale of the voting population over time.
I was not to fall into the doomscrolling trap this time; 2016 to 2020 wore me out. No more daily screenshots of the day’s norm-breaking events like a self-appointed historian in the WWII ‘40s might have — clipping out newspaper headlines for their scrapbook as if they were in-charge of documenting the start of the fall of the ‘western’ world.
But I’ve got the No-Complaints sword by my side this time.
What happens next will be what has happened.
I no longer have to give those feelings the time of day. I will deal with what affects me and the choices I can make when those times arise.
And in this moment of refreshing clarity, I was able to hear a little voice in the back of my mind ask after a big yawn, “Heyyy… remind me, when were we eligible to apply for New Zealand Citizenship?”
Today, it turns out.
I could have even had it done a few months ago if I hadn't mistakenly thought it was a 5-year wait from Permanent Residency, rather than any Residency.
So here I am now—moments to midnight—one click away from submitting my Dual Citizenship application.
And… done.
That’s it. It's sent.
From once thinking San Diego was the farthest I could settle to now being not only a homeowner halfway across the world, but a soon to be citizen too, I wonder what other self-imposed barriers I'll be breaking next.
I'm not running from the States, I'm opening up options for myself and my family. First, coincidentally moving abroad in Trump’s 2017 first term, and now solidifying it in the year of what might become his second haha — it brings an actual “who would have guessed?” chuckle to the room.
Nothing is more locked in at this moment than an Application Number, but what a Halloween day to remember— a blending of two cultures today, a pumpkin and a passport.
This story continues here: On becoming a NZ Dual Citizen (Part 2)