Opportunity Cost: The life I want to Live

My fight to live a life that fulfills me

It’s 1:19 am. I was going to write an article about how I’ve witnessed my family have to choose between being able to spend time with their loved ones, and their everyday labor to keep the luxuries they’ve worked for. Now I see there is something more important that I have to think about. I had to make a choice today. Between trying to show the billionaire Yusaku Maesawa that it was unlikely he would find someone he loved with his methods, and learning how to program for Thumoslang and go to Vietnam. After a lot of thinking, I decided Vietnam was the better option. However, I’ve been thinking about it since, and I don’t know if that is true. On the one hand, learning how to program and going to Vietnam would be a hell of an adventure. It would also prepare me in a lot of ways to do work on a more global stage. However, It would mean leaving my life here in Providence behind.

[2] If I left I don’t know if I would be able to continue the relationships that I’ve built with the people I love here. People like Shira, and Dan, and Ari, and many of my other deep, close friends. If I left here, I would have to say goodbye to those relationships. I don’t know if I can do that. Even if I was able to come regularly to Providence to visit, it wouldn’t be the same. Every time I came, I would be a visitor, no longer a part of the Providence family. I would have to build a life in Vietnam all over again. I would have Nick, but either that would be it of my relationships here, or I would have to begin forcing my friends to make the same difficult decision to move to Vietnam, and I don’t want to put them in that position.

[3] Its a tough decision to make. I’ve been offered a free programming education, a solid job, and an opportunity to adventure in another country. Some would say I’m crazy for turning it down. But I love my people here, and I don’t believe that I should leave them all. I did that once already, to my friends in Colorado, and that still hurts me today. I don’t want to do it a second time. Especially not with how much I care about each and every one of them. I can do with travelling and being away for weeks and months. I don’t think I can do years. If I had to say goodbye to my people for years, I think I would go crazy. I would end my life thinking about the maybes that could have been, and I’m not willing to do that. What if I had lived with Shira longer. What if the entire Prov fam had come together and coordinated in the city? What if what if what if what if. So many thoughts of love and connection.

[4] Live in Vietnam? It would be a wonderful year, but I don’t know if I could go much longer than that. And what if in that year my friends ended up breaking apart because I wasn’t around? I couldn’t do it. I would rather die than live in a world where my friends weren’t connected and loving each other. Right now there’s too much fragility in this area. I can’t be called away. Even the military rule (to be explained in an upcoming article) has put pressure on me to figure out ways to keep in contact with my loved ones who I hold so dear, while I’m mere blocks away from them! To pretend like I could keep that up while also building new relationships in Vietnam, and helping manage several projects in Prov city is ludicrous. So I have to figure out what to do next.