We got four new teammates the other day, and I think I speak for all of us when we say we are pretty excited about them. They seem like great new additions. One of them is replacing me at my old village, so we will be heading out together to introduce her and get her situated.
I have been going through some abrupt shifts in what I thought my future looked like, and so I’m reevaluating what I want to do (yet again). To be honest not a lot has changed, I still probably want to go to law school and I still have plans for a great return to the states that includes a motorcycle and touring around.
But the bigger changes are internal. I feel as a wet towel that was being wrung out. Squeezing down into a dense hard mass, but still all twisted up. There is a cold clarity that makes me less concerned about the feelings of other people, and I wonder if that isn’t a good thing at the moment. I haven’t lost my enthusiasm for embracing emotions, for diving in headfirst, or that whole shpeal about experiencing emotions to the fullest, but you can bet the next time around (if there is…) I will be much more cautious. (Says I after only a few days. We all know that the feelings in the time shortly after a breakup are not the most reliable). Still, I am different for the moment. And my ideas about the importance of romance in my life have taken a dramatic turn towards, well, not being important at all.
Partly I just don’t have the space to deal. I am a guest at a volunteer’s house and don’t have my own space or even my own things, and there are a million people at the hostel right now because a stage is COSing (going home). So all of that will have to wait. I have up to this point refused to be largely affected by this whole turn of events, and my ability to clamp down on myself has sort of surprised me. But then again, that cold focus has been used in other parts of my life, perhaps just not yet in this arena.
On a related note, I’ve been noticing an increasing turn toward ambition in the last couple of years. Its an odd sort of thing. I think I have just been so internally focused that I have pursued external things as a means to an internal goal. But I am feeling both that I have some (hubris) of my internal stuff sorted out and that I have the urge to make my mark on the world. Its a little strange though, because I thought that was supposed to happen around age 24 or something, and I’m 30 now. 30 is a pretty cool age, to be honest. So anyway, much of my thoughts about the future are what kind of things I want to make happen in the world, which is different from what kinds of things will facilitate my inner soul searching, which is more of what it used to be like. The next decade is going to be awesome.
PS – Mois de Karem (Ramadan) starts today. Muslims can’t eat or drink anything from sun up to sun down. I wanted to join them this year but I don’t have a family anymore and you definitely need a support system to do that kind of thing. It remains to be seen how much it will affect the availability of food on the streets. It could be a (less for me than others) rough four weeks. Also, I kind of have to keep my drinking and eating under wraps, since its rude to partake in front of others. That means no more tea on my desk.
