BLOG GONE....

“In my end is my beginning.” - T.S. Eliot

Well, all good things come to an end. I realized today that my travels have come to a close. I'm back in the United States, working through the dregs of repatriation. Now I'm returning to class and the trials of looking for employment. My blog has served me well this past year - keeping all of my friends & family abreast of the goings on in my life while I was out of the country. However I've come back - and with every ending comes a new beginning. I'm stopping the blog. I'm not sad to be stopping. Just another closure that the year brought. Thank you all, dear readers. I hope that you enjoyed my tales of journeys in a far off place. But now I end, and thus begin again.

Ciao, darlings!

Reality Bites...not just another movie.

I'm struggling with issues today. Today I feel like I hurt a friend and that makes me horribly sad. I feel terrible and like I should have done something more to make sure that it didn't happen, but now I've made my bed and I have to lie in it.

Then there's the crashing back to reality. I had a good long chat with Mathea today about repat'ing. I feel as if there is the me that had all those experiences abroad and the me that left here 7 months ago - the two are trying to reconcile themselves. I want to embrace the person I've become and enjoy it, but there is the reality of the fact that there is the person that people here know and their expectations. Everything is in conflict. She made an excellent point - that I didn't exactly come back to fields of stability. I'm graduating from law school, working toward the bar exam, trying to find the next step in my career, sorting out what that will be. I've widened my search to include opportunities in other states (preferably either D.C., Boston, Philly, or Seattle - quite the motley crew, I know. But it's what I'm interested in.) and other countries thus if the right opportunity comes along I may end up moving this year as well. I have to accept that as a potential eventuality (Michele & Mike are looking to move soon as well - it would be nice to be on the same coast as my best friend again).

Change is going to keep winging at me. All things considered, I think I'm dealing well. People keep throwing curve balls at me - I have to give them room too because they may not have experienced what I'm going through. I just wish I could get some space to process what is going on in my head before I get things lobbed at my head that I have to deal with. Today I'm feeling frustrated. At least I was able to spend time with a good friend who has been through what I'm going through. She talked me through a lot of it. It makes it easier knowing that I'm not alone in this.

Rebecca in Baby Land

I never stopped to consider what would happen to my life with my friends when I made the conscious decision not to have children and made that a permanent state of affairs. Fortunately for me, I am even more firmly rooted in the correctness of that decision for me - thank God as there is no going back now for me at any rate. I am following the call of other instincts and my deep rooted desire for a brilliant career filled with places and people that I am sure that I have yet to only stretch the far reaches of my imagination to. However I wonder now & then what it will mean for my friendships. I found out today that another of my closest friends is expecting (I am really very very happy for her!!) and there is of course Leah. The substance of the friendship has not really changed - I am so lucky in the friends that I have and the people in my life. It still doesn't answer the question of what our lives will all look like in 5 years - mine without children and their with. Will the friendships remain unchanged save for a few necessary modifications, or will our familial statuses respectively bring unheralded change? It is inevitable that the progression of our lives is going to be affected by these choices - but what does that mean for the future of our relationships together? I love my friends - I don't mean to cling to them and I respect the changes that happen for all of us because they let us grow, but it certainly makes me think a lot.

Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Pleasant events for the New Year...my plan last night was to stay in like a fuddy duddy and watch TV, perhaps go to bed early...however I received an invitation from the couple that I met in Vienna to come out to their home in Stillwater for a formal New Year's Eve masquerade. It was lovely!!! I had a delightful time - delightful times seem to follow them around. They have so many amazing people surrounding them that it is impossible not to enjoy yourself. I dragged myself home and collapsed into a happy stupor at 4:30 this morning. The perfect way to end the year. It happened by chance and it was delightful!

In other news...it would seem that everything I touch right now, I break. Don't trust me with valuables folks - particularly electronics. My iPod finally bit the dust and I had to buy a new one (I guess not bad after 3 years of being shoved, dropped, and tossed into the bottom of bags. It made it around the world!) and today I fired up the printer and it broke as well. That one is even OLDER (about 6 years) - so I'm not horrified by that either...but it wasn't high on my list of things to do...buy new electronics right now.

I also ordered business cards today. I met a friend of the family last night and she has some ideas for me where she works and I ended up scribbling my cell and email on the back of a box lid. Pretty horrified by that state of affairs. I went to www.vistaprint.com and ordered up some business cards. Sheesh! A failure to plan is a plan for failure!

Broader purpose?

Every once in awhile, I can't help thinking about broader purpose. Leah & I had a chat about that tonight. It seems like so many people never find what their higher purpose is - they settle into the daily routine and monotony as if that were their destiny. To lead a life devoid of something more. It's easy to live an ordinary life - to never find a way to distinguish oneself and to struggle with the feeling like something is missing. And I don't mean this from a religious standpoint - that would be too easy. I find it an intellectual pursuit. Something that so many forget. The philosophers had it, the great minds of the world - the scientists, the politicians that sought greatness in the masses, the seekers and explorers. Those people that burned to live, to seek and to find. I am afraid sometimes of losing my need to seek and to find. Of sinking deeper into the sameness, the comfort of what I know. However I wonder if it's like the question of being crazy - if you can consciously think that you are crazy, are you really then crazy? As in, crazy people don't know they are crazy. If you resolve to always look, to learn, to quest - will you then do so?

Back in MN

It is so STRANGE being back here. I pulled into town late last night, nearly collapsed into bed. Today I'm back and doing all these things that should seem extraordinarily normal - going to Target, driving around Minneapolis, seeing Leah - but it all seems so strange. Like I'm walking through everything in a cloud. My room looks like an H-bomb went off. I've pretty much just brought everything in from the car and dumped it in the middle of the floor. I look around the room and it still seems pretty full of my STUFF - so the idea of find places for the rest of the STUFF seems overwhelming.

I've been a busy bee today. I took Leah to work, registered the car & put the plates on (after much cussing and being generally mad at the car - the previous owner took the screws for the license plates so I had to dig through Matt's stash to find some that would work), joined Bally's and went to the grocery store. I'm picking Leah up at 4:30 to go to the mall.

It's just so strange to be back here doing all the things that were normal before. Vienna and all my travels still seem like a lovely, lovely dream. I want my whole life to feel the way these past 7 months did. As if I lead a perfectly charmed life. As if nothing can touch me and only good things seem to happen. For the most part, that would be absolutely true. All of the amazing things that happened by far outweighed the few pesky things. It's all so far away now. I don't know how to preserve myself. I sometimes think I have changed so fundamentally that I can never really be back here in my head 100%, then on the other hand I could see myself sliding back in as if I never left. It's so strange.

At any rate, I'm back. Now the task is to find some way to spend the rest of my days. Oy!

Back in the US of A

It's so strange being back. I arrived back last Sunday - but actually didn't make it to my parent's house until about 5:30 on Monday morning. There was some huge debacle about my luggage and one bag being misplaced. I ended up hanging around the airport in Newark until just after midnight. Thank goodness the Budget there is open 24 hours. If it had closed, I would have been in a lot of trouble. However I finally made it home. I'm a bit jet lagged. It's usually that I'm just tired really early on in the evening, then I'm wide awake at 3AM.

It's so strange being back here. Everything seems much louder and brighter. I hardly know what to think most of the time. Vienna and all of my travels seems more like a pretty dream than a reality and something that I actually lived through. I cried when I left Vienna - it was so sad to go. I didn't want to leave all my friends and the city itself. I know that all good things eventually come to an end. I am hoping that it is the beginning of something else that is just as amazing. I had a referral phone interview with Target on Thursday morning and within 24 hours had a blow-off email. It's times like that when you realize that they do it merely as a courtesy. When you tell me you're working hard looking for an opportunity that would fit my skill set but that you haven't found anything (blah blah blah) within 24 hours - I realize there isn't a whole lot of hard looking that went on there. It was a courtesy call and little else. I did apply for 2 jobs there, so we'll see if anything comes of them. I did have the shocking realization that this may end up being a year fraught with disappointments and rejection. Looking for jobs is necessarily that way. You know it may not be you per se, but it is rejection nonetheless.

Love my new car. It's zippy and fun. I did have to put new tires on it and in the process of doing so they found that one of the rims was cracked, but the tire place was AMAZING and took care of everything. I went to Tire Land in Nichols, New York. They really were astounding. The guy drove to Syracuse to pick up the new rim at 5AM on Friday and didn't charge me a dime for his time. It almost felt unfair.

Well, updating this at my parents is difficult - their internet is iffy. So happy holidays everyone!