Here in this place a new light is shining

Remember how great it was going to be at home? How much I was going to be able to relax, spend time with friends, fill my tank? Well...

It's almost as great as I hoped. By far the best part is the connecting. We went shopping the day after Thanksgiving, along with half of the population of Minnesota. We stood in line and talked to the folks around us, we shopped and asked other shoppers for advice, we ran into a childhood friend and chatted about her five(!) kids, we saw my third grade teacher and heard about her recent retirement. There was so much... conversation. I could hardly believe it. My inner extrovert was ecstatic.

And then the road trip. For some reason I really want this blog to be a somewhat complete record of my life (ha!) and so I have this urge to capture every emotion, every reunion, every mundane detail. But right now I am too busy living it to write about it in insane detail. This, I have decided, is a Very Good Thing.

So many highlights. Mostly these highlights consist of names and faces, old friends, new friends, new kinds of friends entirely. I saw two awesome movies in quick, exhausting, exhilarating succession - Rent and Goblet of Fire, both commendable in their separate ways and for their separate audiences. I could go on, but (see above explanation).

One concrete highlight that I am pleased to share: I think I have a plan for next year! At least, there appear to be no great obstacles to the plan at this point. I met for a long, lovely conversation with He Who Has the Power Concerning These Things and His Awesome Assistant, and it appears that if I want to be here next year (in this particular Midwestern city), there would be a very neat position available to me. One that sparks my vocational passions. One that allows me to live in close proximity to my friends - perhaps very close, depending on how that all goes. It's concrete enough and probable enough to give me a hook to hang my hope on. I think that was perhaps what I was searching for most desperately on this trip: something to help me get through the remaining months of... well, you know... my job (insert appropriate metaphor here).

I am so much happier here. Not happy in the life-is-perfect-tra-la-la way, but in a way that seems to balance itself out in the end, where the good times and the bad times add up to make a life, instead of consistently coming up short, which is how I have been feeling over there lately. It is good to know that I am still capable of this balance, that my Happy has not gone permanently flaccid from lack of exercise. I am not looking forward to going back. In fact, in my most tired and vulnerable times, when my allergies and my stupid jet lag combine to erode my defenses, I bawl when I think about getting back on that plane. But for the most part I am doing a remarkably good job of taking things as they come and tanking up so that I can survive the desert.