The Half Life

Expat Diary, May 28, 2018: Adam ponders the future.

Today’s blog theme song: “Half Life” from the 2009 album GO WEST:

The “diary” part of this site is more or less the continuation of the weekly blogs I used to post on Facebook. I’ll be posting them here regularly as I think there’s something worth writing about.  It remains to be seen if they’ll be any less long-winded.  🙂

I’ve been spending a lot of the last few weeks on the blog, writing, coding, formulating (tactful I hope) ways to pitch the pledge idea – which by the way I know is a tough sell and I appreciate everyone who has chipped in so far or at least considered it – but that’s an important but small piece of my current puzzle.

For the first six months, I mostly focused on my health, acclimating and getting my head into my environment. For the last two months, I’ve been focused on the direction of my life going forward.

There have been moments – thankfully few – in the last few weeks where I got a bit depressed. This was alarming until I took a step back and realized that most people, no matter how good their lives are, get depressed once in a while…but it did bother me that I have my life essentially how I wanted it, everything was going pretty well, what was I bummed about? It took a few days to arrive at a decent answer.

When I left the U.S. for Asia, I explained to a lot of people that it was because I only had “half a life” in the U.S. Besides my disgust at where we were going politically and socially, on a personal level I was bored and lonely. All that vanished when I got to Asia. Indeed, a friend of mine from high school – a fundamentally good guy who I tend to get into arguments with on Facebook sometimes partly because he’s got a little bit of “get off my lawn” creeping in – just made a trip to Thailand with his daughter and e-mailed me ecstatically. “I don’t want to go back,” he happily enthused. I knew exactly what he meant.

Here’s the thing that I hadn’t really thought about, though. When I say I only had “half a life” in the U.S., I did still have half a life. The part that I did have I enjoyed very much. I never wanted to be a studio rat recording 24 hours a day, but I loved the work – at least when I wasn’t physically uncomfortable doing it. I also loved playing with the Chaos Band and other good musicians. I loved hiking and exploring nature in California. I even liked getting my wine on and killing a night on the internet once in a while. Without forward motion in my life, a sense of community and exploration, and relationships that really stimulated me on a regular basis – it wasn’t enough, particularly as the years went by and nothing really changed. But it was something. The stuff I did have was very, very good.

Ballparking the future, I realized I had a similar problem in reverse. My life here is better in almost every way. But there are things I do miss that I don’t have…and if I don’t want to be ping-ponging back and forth between Asia and the U.S. all the time (which, absent some kind of a work opportunity, I can’t really afford), I need to figure out how to address that. The question of how to sustain myself financially will require time and effort but it doesn’t seem to be a huge unsolvable problem. I don’t expect to get rich off the blog, but it will help, and I can use this as a resume to get into other kinds of things, within the limitations of how long my neck allows me behind the laptop. The question of how to get the other half of my life going is a little trickier.

Where I’m Going Next

I really love Bali, and of course now that I’m closer to the end of this 60-day stretch it’s starting to feel more and more like home just as I have to contemplate leaving again. That said, I always wondered at the beginning if this would be my final destination. It’s a wonderful place but it’s not a place where you forge ahead ambitiously. It’s more of a place where you chill out and gather your wits.

It’s also a problem because the immigration laws in Indonesia are so strict and on Bali, they are strictly enforced. The government (quite rightly) zealously guards the locals’ ability to make a living and unlike other places in southeast Asia, even the digital nomads down at the coworking space are at some risk for deportation. But more to the point in my case, it’s become clear to me that if I decide to stay in Bali long-term, I will probably have to give up performing in any capacity for the forseeable future. Music, either as a means to supplement my income or just to have the joy of jamming with others on a stage or entertaining people, isn’t going to be an option here. Even sitting in for more than three songs puts you at risk for deportation.

For the time being, I don’t mind. But when I think ahead about filling in the other half of my life, this looms as a big problem. Indonesia has other issues – mostly related to how difficult and expensive it is to get the necessary visas to be here legally long-term, and the price and quality of health care relative to other places – but for now the question of if I’m going to be able to perform music is a good place to focus.

I have started to make pretty firm plans to return to the U.S. to take care of some Karma Frog business, deal with a few logistical issues, and to dispose of more of my stuff. I have 3 to 3 1/2 months before that happens. The whole question of going “home” for awhile is a world of mixed feelings I haven’t fully gotten my head into yet and is a good topic for another blog. At the moment, the question is how best to use my remaining three months.

For most of the time I’ve been in Asia, I’ve bounced between only two locations (Sanur, Bali and Manila, The Philippines). Now that I have a firmer handle on my budget and I’m pricing things in well in advance, I’m more confident about switching that up without creating a huge money suck…and I need to explore some other options for when I’ve hopefully wrapped things up in the U.S. I need to figure out if there are places that offer some of what Bali offers that might be more feasible, in terms of my ability to do music and also a less strict regulatory regime for expats. I already have thought about this a lot, and I have some good places to try based on past trips here.

Next month I will be heading back to the Philippines, but unlike previous trips I will be spending comparatively little time in Manila – maybe 10 days total. I’ll use the remaining three weeks of my visa (I explored staying longer but there are logistical issues I won’t bore you with) to check out a couple of locations in what they call “the provinces” – basically anywhere that’s not Manila. My friend Michael Curan has been doing some legwork for me in Cebu, talking to expat musicians there about their experiences and also filling me in on the scene. I also want to spend some time in at least one other spot to get a feel for it – one week minimum. Iloilo City is interesting, though I also have some friends near Tacloban that I might try to get down to see.

The prospect of doing something musical in the Philippines gets me excited in a way not much has recently (musically speaking I mean). Unlike Bali, the local music tastes are very in line with mine and the quality of musicianship in the Philippines is extremely high. Obviously, the country has a lot of other issues. The food (sorry Filipinos, balut and adobo ain’t my thing) and the internet are still extremely problematic. But I do want to see if I could make it work out in the provinces. I love Manila in small doses, but absent some kind of financial incentive I wouldn’t want to live there.

After that I’m going to head back to a city I’ve spent a little time in and has been nagging at the back of my head for a long time: Siem Reap, Cambodia. I spent a week there in 2017 and a few days the prior year and I liked it a lot. Since then (like pretty much everywhere else) there’s been local political deterioration but (knock on wood) nothing that should affect me personally. I had originally figured I’d just put in a few weeks there but when I started getting into the budgeting I realized that (a) probably owing to its relative lack of tourism it’s challenging to find really inexpensive, good accommodations in the Philippines and (b) if I chose to extend my stay in Siem Reap for a month I could live there for dirt cheap. It’s also a location where I know from previous trips that expat musicians can play without running into any problems. So I’m looking hard at that option, though I have to do a little more research and make sure everything there is cool and there are no surprises lurking.

After that, I will not have much time left before I go back to the U.S. One more run back to Bali is possible but I’d need a good reason for it (a business or personal opportunity that I can’t forsee right now), because it would be logistically difficult. Since I’ll most likely fly out of Manila, another investigation of the provinces in the Philippines is most likely, though I’ll also have the possibility to check out other places. If at that point the blog is going well enough to justify a blitz around other countries in Asia to take pictures, then I might take that option. We’ll just have to see.

Excited and Sad

All of this is open to change if some new opportunity opens up, but for now this is where I’m pointing the boat. The nice thing about all this is for the first time in a while I’m not just excited about my day to day life but I’m excited about new immediate prospects for the future. Ballparking music in the Philippines, or spending a month getting to know and rooting in Siem Reap, are both interesting possibilities I want to explore. But given that I will most likely go home for a few months after that, it means that unless something occurs to change my plans I’ll be leaving Bali – the closest place to home I have and have had for a long time – for quite a long stretch. I just don’t want to think about that, other than to enjoy my time here – including the impending visit of dear friends from the United States – as much as possible.

Life is all about choices. To reach forward, you always have to loosen your grip on what you have, and what was past. It’s a tough thing, but it’s reality.