The Road Was Never Going to be Straight

Sunday arrived and I needed it more than I had realised.

The day was spent on the quiet, necessary work of moving forward — the small, unglamorous tasks that don't announce themselves as important but accumulate into something that matters. It worked well, right up until the moment my mind drifted toward the future and the question I have been trying not to look at directly for longer than is probably wise.

How do I stay in China long term?

It turns out the answer may be considerably more complicated than I had allowed myself to believe. Which is, of course, how these things tend to work — the details that feel distant always reveal their difficulty at the moment you finally decide to look at them properly.

As far as I can see, the options narrow to two. The first involves getting married, which I will set aside without much deliberation. The second involves starting a business and using it to sponsor a visa — cleaner in principle, more demanding in practice, and relying heavily on exactly the kind of administrative detail that has never been among my natural strengths. Anyone who knows me knows that.

I am trying not to dwell on it too much. It is still, hopefully, six months away. But I can feel the weight of it on the horizon, growing incrementally more present with each week that passes.

For now, the only honest response is to set it aside and stay focused on what is immediately in front of me — the next six months of practice, of review, of becoming the best teacher and practitioner I am capable of being in the time that remains here. These arts I have fallen deeply in love with deserve that focus, and so do I.

Everything else, I have to trust, will find its shape in time.

This journey has taught me many things. Perhaps the most reliable of all is this: the road was never going to be straight or smooth, and expecting otherwise was always the source of the difficulty rather than the road itself. Accept the ups and the downs. Stay close to what matters. Keep moving.

There is always a way forward. I have found that to be true more times than I can count.

I choose to believe it will be true again