Just Hold Your Nose And Jump

The past few days, since returning from Chicago late Tuesday night, I have felt very scattered and frantic--trying to do my laundry, clean my room, run errands, pack up things to return to my storage space, make a million phone calls and send two million emails and generally conquer a to-do list of epicly intimidating proportions. This morning while working on securing my finances for the next seven months, no small project, I had a brief study break in the form of a Google chat with one of my oldest friends in San Francisco. A devotee of privacy and a self-proclaimed conspiracy theorist she is a fan of the "off the record" feature when using gmail's chat application but her wisdom was too rich to let pass by unnoticed so with cutting and pasting being impossible I retyped it all here. Thank goodness for insightful friends. Read on...

me: one topic of conversation--i don't really want to go to africa, and my travel agent just issued my ticket this a.m. i think it is just a passing thing and i don't REALLY not want to go but it's kind of confusing for me right now

v: you want to go to africa. honest.

me: right? i'm just feeling very displaced right now. when i lived in jerusalem it was with other people who were traveling and working overseas and volunteering and had kind of a portable life. now i am back here and my friends have jobs, and homes, and predictable lives. which i realize is to some extent the reason i left...maybe it's a case of the grass is always greener. i'm still happy about my choice but it's just starting to seem like a long year

v: it's true. but it's only a year. you have friends here and we'll be here when you get back. permanence is overrated, besides.

me: i know that is what i always thought until i packed two bags and took off. it still believe it's true but maybe there's a middle ground between permanence and nomadism?

v: yeah, but it requires being rich.

me: very funny...something i am definitely not. ugh i knew i would feel like this if i came back to the bay area between israel and africa so i shouldn't be surprised

v: yeah...and you'll be back. it's not like you're making a career limiting move. or like you're bumming aimlessly around europe. you can choose stability whenever you're ready for it. just not right this moment.

me: okay are you sure, because stability seems very tempting right now. of course i know that if i have come this close i would regret it forever if now i didn't go. so really this is a false argument from the beginning, but it feels very unsettling nonetheless

v: it is unsettling. just hold your nose and jump :)

me: good advice. that just might be the quote of the day...blogworthy...thank you for the wise counsel