Chapter 1: The Future

I’ve been very pensive lately. I’m not sure why exactly. I think it has to do with having the last week off (granted I spent 90% of it in bed with the flu). But I spent a good bit of time discussing the future and I’m now both excited and nervous and so many other things that the only word I can use is pensive.

I think I’ll start out with the one future event that I am completely sure of how I feel about it. I am going to Romania in just over two weeks. I booked my flight yesterday and I am so excited. My friend grew up there and we have been discussing the possibility of going to visit her family and it has finally come to fruition courtesy of travelzoo’s cheap flights. In a last minute decision, a few other friends decided to come as well; so now there are a total of four of us going for a week. I have never been to Eastern Europe and I am going to hit at least two countries while I am there (we are flying into Hungary and visiting that area as well as spending time in Romania). We will have a fluent tour guide, a free place to stay, and so many good times that I just can’t wait. My desire for travel is always looming and while I’ve been lucky enough to do a decent bit of traveling so far these past twelve months, I haven’t been out of the country for several years. I realize that this sounds like a really snobby, yuppie comment but I’ve said it many times before: travel is my biggest passion. The fact that I can escape school for a week and go traveling to new and exciting places with natives is so thrilling it’s beyond describable to me. I’ve had this feeling in my chest when it comes to traveling for most of my life and I have still not found a coherent way to describe it. I’m sure you’ll catch scattered attempts in this blog to describe this feeling as time passes but I can guarantee I’ll never do it justice.

Beyond my impending trip to Romania, the next future event I suppose I can talk about is moving to New Orleans. I spent maybe 36 hours in nola during our road trip this summer and even then I was talking to people about moving there someday. When I went back on my birthday I solidified that idea to myself and started telling people that I wanted to move there when it was feasible. Feasible is approximately one year from now. Whoa. My initial reaction is to be so excited that I can finally start living a life fully my own. No more following a path more or less laid out for me, no more living where I have been more or less told to be, but really choosing my own life path. Where I want to go, what I want to do, no one around to fall back on or bail me out. That’s amazing! I’m mostly independent as it is but this is a whole new level of independence that I have been craving. Recently, and very unfortunately in terms of productivity for school things, I have been looking at real estate in the nola area. I want a good idea of what is available so that I can take a few trips down there, look at places to live, and start making deals to set everything up. The thing that has now started making me nervous is the location of New Orleans within the US. I’m not an idiot or naïve; I realize where hurricanes are and recognize the devastation that has been left behind from Katrina simply because of the geography of nola. While looking at this real estate however, I have had my first realizations of the reality of nature in that area. I’m not saying this is a deterrent for me to go; it just makes me a bit more nervous than I originally was. It’s hard coming to grips with all of the natural differences/dangers when you’re on an independence streak and just want to break out on your own. Like I said, not a full deterrent by any means, it just leaves a lingering nervousness where it used to be fully excitement. Something interesting however, is that I’ve talked to my dad briefly about some of these things and he actually was supportive and discussed options with me. He talked to me like this was a real possibility and gave me adult advice; it made me feel like a mature adult, a real “grown up;” and while my dad has always treated me like an adult, there was something different about this, and it made me feel really good about the entire situation. So while there is definitely way more excitement brewing in me about this than nervousness, the reality of the situation has definitely come out of the rose colored glasses I had unknowingly been wearing.

I had a few other things I wanted to talk about in this entry but it is already decently long, so I think I will save them for subsequent entries. I also feel like I haven’t really described things well in this entry and that I’ve been talking in circles. It doesn’t help that I’ve been writing while talking to people as well as having started and stopped writing several times before I finally got to this point. Regardless, I guess the main point here is just to convey my excitement for future events as well as to bring up the reality that is bearing down on me about the future. I promise my next entry will be more coherent and straightforward. Adieu!

Sunt incantata!