Falafels and Zohans: A Year in Israel

The jig’s up

I used to be able to map out my weekly agenda in under 5 seconds. 
Weekdays consisted of: six train journeys a day, eight hours planted at a desk, and a gruelling gym routine on my return home to help burn off the confectionary I’d consume after lunch, depressed that my hour’s break was over.  Even my weekends were routine; a coffee with a friend here, a few drinks in a bar there. Funny then that however predictable my existence had become, I was utterly terrified of letting it go.  However much the days would roll in and roll out, months going by with nothing much to show for them, I felt stable and held together by my routine.  Battling through each day, I would find resolve at their end and like my friends around me, would enjoy a few drinks at the end of the week, subconsciously rewarding ourselves for such commitment to our treadmill. Addicted, like a moth to a flame, I danced around my routine, alternately finding purpose then singeing myself on its punishing solidity.

So as much as I looked forward to embracing a new lifestyle here, I half expected to mourn the loss of this clearly defined structure.  How would I pass the time outside the comfort of the office coffee kitchen?  It certainly helped that my first three weeks were a complete and utter whirlwind.  There was little time to feel purposeless when I had one week to get the flat ready, move out of my shifty hotel and then entertain 2 friends from London who came to stay in the following two weeks.  As we filled our days with sight-seeing, eating, sunbathing and more eating, a reprogramming of sorts took effect.  I began to rather enjoy straying ‘off the map’ and letting the hours take me wherever I felt like going. 

Alone again, I was nervous I’d start climbing the walls of my newly furnished flat. 
But the sea air calmed me and I went on the hunt for some part-time work, something I had been planning to do to bring the shekels in, but also for the very prevention of above wall-climbing.  A few attempts at blagging-my-Hebrew-language skills later and I found a stint at a little Mexican café, run by two American sisters; the only people who took me for an Israeli on first impressions.  But the inevitable happened; I struggled to explain to customers what an enchilada is in Hebrew and my shifts have been cut down to two a week.

So I should really use this chance to go to Ulpan, the language school. Or visit Eilat and go diving like I’d always planned. Or see the Wailing Wall. Yet I find myself waking up, stretching and smiling. I take a shower and eat watermelon. I go to the beach for an hour then stroll around the markets, picking up little things for the flat.  Days, which I thought would drag out without my iron routine, drift by and it’s hard to remember where I am in the week.  Yes, I need to find more work, but at the moment I am breathing in my open schedule and feel more alive than ever.  I don’t need to tie myself to things that bring in the money but don’t satisfy me in the slightest.  I don’t need to bang out endless office tasks to fill my time and feel like I’ve lived a day.  Because at last I’m actually living. The moth has finished its jig.  Problem is that now even two shifts a week is feeling like a chore.