So I was walking down the street on Sunday, enjoying the weather and figuring out what I wanted to buy at the Turkish supermarket. I was thinking about how many times my feet had been on that particular street, how many different trips I’d made and carted groceries home. And then I noticed – I was narrating. Narrating my way down the street, the feel of the ground under my shoes and the crumbling facades of the buildings around me.

You know, I had never even noticed I stopped? Sometime in Turkmenistan, I stopped, and without that internal narration, trying to write in this journal was impossible. I didn’t stop writing, though. I just stopped writing in this journal. I worked on my novel, and I wrote fanfiction. But email dwindled and this journal stopped.

I think I know why, and the answer is ugly. I was unhappy enough in Turkmenistan that I didn’t want to pay enough attention to my life to write about it, in a journal or on paper. And not a dramatic, exciting kind of unhappy, because god knows I have no problem writing about that. Just a long term grinding down of the soul.

And, I do devoutly hope, it’s over now. I mean, I’m narrating now. That must be good.

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.