My personality likes challenges.
If you haven’t noticed it yet, I like to create these challenges for myself. I like to seek out these situations where there’s a clear goal in the end but something else between me and that goal. I like the struggle, I guess. I like the accomplishment of struggling through it.
Sometimes, challenges make otherwise mundane paths more interesting for me. I’m not sure I would have finished university with as much fun if I had gone through at a slower pace. Pushing it kept me going.
Saudi is a type of challenge, like Korea before it.
And people ask why I like these, why I’d want to purposely make things difficult for myself.
To me, it doesn’t seem that different from any other test of endurance: climbing a mountain, running a marathon, raising children. Sometimes, there’s no really good reason outside of the process itself. There’s something about climbing, running, and parenting that’s good in itself, regardless of the results. And if you don’t understand that, there’s not much anyone can say to convince you.
Not that I’m trying to convince anyone. Not that what I do would work for anyone else.
I like challenges because pursuing them is part of who I am, not necessarily anyone else. I like challenges, especially the ones I accept on purpose, because they expose the tension between what I see and what I want to see.
