Doldrums and imported beer…

Self-motivation is an essential tool for the success of a PCV. Without self-motivation all that Peace Corps service will end up being is a lot of time spent alone in your house watching movies on your laptop or reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels. To be fair, even with self-motivation volunteers will still be spending a lot of time doing those things, but without it, this job is an endless, painful game of watching the seconds on the clock tick away.

I find myself lacking self-motivation lately. Because I don’t have the drive to go out and make something happen, at the end of the day I feel worse than when I started. Then, because I feel worse than before I have even less desire to go out and make something happen, and I want to stay in even more. The thing is, it is a cycle. I don’t motivate myself, I feel worse, I am less motivated, I feel worse, less motivated, and so on.

All volunteers experience something similar at some point (or almost all at least). For me it is happening right now. All the newness and excitement of the experience has worn away and now I am reasonably well-versed at what I do. I have streamlined it to take up less and less of my time, leaving more and more free time open. Also, I look around and see the lack of motivation my community members have and it leaves me disheartened.

They call this the one-year slump, part of the volunteer life cycle. When you first get here everything is new and exciting and moving so fast. You get to your community and you are scared, but determined. You struggle to pick up the language, to get to know the community, and to look for projects during your first six months. After six months, things start rolling along (if you’re lucky) and you start getting used to your new life.

After a year though, all the newness and excitement is gone. You’re friends and family at home become disinterested in your work as they are now accustomed to your new lifestyle, and being as the work we do is so slow-moving, there are rarely developments for them anyway. Life just seems to float by effortlessly.

Also, I just found out today the grant I spent so much time working on was not accepted. Ouch. Not all hope is lost though; they mentioned that if I broadened the theme some and included some more information the committee would be open to looking at it again. That just means convincing the community to put in more work and broaden their interests, and it means rewriting the whole thing again (in Spanish, ugh). I am thinking of tackling that project next week, because I am honestly not up to the task at this moment.

But, I am working hard to bring back my motivation, get excited about my work again, and keep a positive attitude. These doldrums don’t seem to be evaporating on their own, so I am going to be proactive and try and make myself feel better. Today, going to play with cute children. Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, and though I am far away from corned-beef and cabbage in my Grandma’s kitchen (well ACTUALLY my Grandma is far away from corned-beef and cabbage in her kitchen too; my grandparents, parents, and the rest of my family are in Las Vegas celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in style, so even if I was home there would be no corned-beef for me) I am going to the one Irish bar in El Salvador with some other PCVs. Hopefully the night with hold a decent dinner, some wonderful English-speaking time with the other Americans, and if I am lucky, and Irish car bomb too. Then again, imported beer is hard to come by here .