Winning

Not this kind of winning.

This kind.

Sorry for that. I can't help but take a brief step back to take a look at how things have been panning out so far, having just passed the 2-month mark in my stay here.

As I alluded to in previous posts, I came here for a variety of purposes beyond simply doing research. I've already discussed my purposes related to Making The World A Better Place, but, as some of you know, I've also had personal reasons for embarking on this venture. /Sharing Moment Alert (To skip this Sharing Moment, scroll down to the paragraph fourth from the bottom):

I applied for this scholarship when I was in a phase of my life where things didn't make very much sense. I had just graduated from college, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, I had no obvious opportunities staring me in the face, I was facing my first year of independence, etc. The time of year was at hand for applying to grad school, but I repeated my decision of the previous year not to apply, as I wasn't 100% committed to a specific path. A very wise ex-professor of mine had suggested going abroad and doing something, anything, not only for the fantastic cultural opportunities it would afford me, but also for the opportunity to get my proverbial excrement together.

And, if we're being honest with each other--for which I see no reason not to be at this juncture with you, my loyal readership--I needed to get it together. With the conspicuous exeunt from my life of college and all the trappings thereof, I had lost quite a few of the things that had kept me going and working and progressing: Externally-imposed structures and the goals that came with them. Easy social opportunities. A regular schedule. Motivation.

They think they do a good job of preparing you for the Real World in college--and give all sorts of flowery speeches to this end--but the one gargantuan thing they forgot to tell me, at least, is that all of the things I just mentioned must suddenly begin to come from one's own person. You blink, you're a graduate, and from that day forth you must be, 100%, the steward of your own life. One day, you're in an environment where you're guided as much as you want to be, and the next, you're out into the open ocean of the Necessity of Self-Direction.

Suddenly finding myself in this ocean, while I took the steps necessary to ensure my survival (I found a job, an apartment, etc.), beyond that minimum threshold, I floundered in a lot of ways. Without anything definite to work toward (aside from the obligations of my unfulfilling, clearly non-career-launching job), I wasted a lot of time not doing much of anything. And so, without, really, anything else to turn or look forward to, I decided to take the not-so-hazardous leap of applying for a scholarship abroad, to see if it would lead me anywhere that might encourage me to get that aforementioned excrement together.

Fast forward exactly a year, and I'm living on my own in a studio apartment in a former Eastern Bloc country whose language I still command rudimentarily, pursuing a completely self-directed program of study. And, though I know this is in direct violation of every principle I've ever had inculcated within me (those being humility, discouragement of self-aggrandizement, self-indulgence, jinxing oneself, and, perhaps most importantly, committing any of these in a public space such as this one), I want to say it: So far, in the new sense of the word that Charlie Sheen has introduced to our lexicon, I'm winning.

Perhaps my biggest flaw that was up for correction was my lack of self-discipline. But I feel myself--albeit slowly and inconsistently--turning into a more disciplined person. I have begun getting into a routine - putting in 8 hours of work a day, just like a real adult, heading to the gym afterwards, using my new language every day in a focused context, using the weekends as a time to relax and meet people and improve my social being. I have made stop-and-start progress, but I have actually set myself a productive, healthy, fulfilling schedule to which I have sometimes managed to adhere. 

In college, there wasn't much of a choice--I had to go to class on a schedule that was more or less set for me, and they gave us so much work that I was forced to be productive or else I would have sunk--but here and now, in what will most likely be the most independent setting of my life, I have had to make all of these things happen for myself. And I'm actually starting to do it, with more and more regularity. I'm getting that proverbial excrement together. This is me starting to win. I have a long way to go, still, but I can feel tangible progress.

Now, to put that all of that self-indulgence masquerading as an uplifting personal anecdote aside, let's talk about the last week. On the business end of things, I have basically spent my research time reading two items. The first is a book by American ethnomusicologist Tim Rice on Bulgarian folk practices. Especially valuable within this volume is the wealth of ethnographic commentary it contains on Bulgarian society from antiquity up through the age of Communism. The second is a just-published dissertation by Galina Denkova on Shopi folk practices, which, of course, is precisely the kind of thing I've been looking for. So I've had a lot to do at the library.

Wednesday was the feast of St. Ivan Rilski, the patron saint of Pernik (via a semi-humorous connection - Pernik is a mining town, and Св. Иван was known for having hidden out in caves for a long portion of his life in order to escape persecution), so my new friend Stefani and I went there for the town festival, which featured about an hour of folk dancing and singing. Pernik is just about at the center of the Shopluk, within the subregion of Graovo, so it was a fine opportunity to witness music that is representative of that area. We got an impromptu tour of their ethnographic museum from a woman who hit the ceiling when she heard I was an American doing research on the Shopi. (Her enthusiasm was kind of astounding. It was nice to be specially accommodated, to be sure, but she was so eager to show us everything that the museum contained. Not that it wasn't appreciated.)

Thursday I was back to the library, had some extraordinarily strong coffee (that it was noteworthy enough to merit inclusion in this blog should tell you just how strong this coffee was), and began cleaning my apartment (a process which lasted until early Friday afternoon) because Laura came on Friday. We went out to a nice dinner Friday night, and Saturday we made a grand tour of Sofia, including, among other things, all of the important buildings and monuments in the eastern half of the Center, качамак from a little soup place that is quickly becoming my favorite, cappuccino at the National Palace of Culture, ridiculous hot chocolate on Цар Освободител, and many other pleasant things to do on a cold day. Sunday we went and had delicious Indian food, the likes of which we hadn't had since a hot July day in Los Angeles, and we gathered a few people for drinks on Sunday night. I had to take her back to the airport early Monday morning, and it has been right back to work for me since.

I am currently in the middle of another busy week that will once again be only four days long, but there will be another post coming Thursday before I leave for the long weekend. To find out where (and it will be cool), read on, dear reader, read on...