I’m sorry for such an incredibly long absence!  I do really miss writing on the blog, and hope that getting over this hurdle and writing this ‘return’ post will help me to keep adamant about posting everyday. 

My silence was caused by a few reasons: internet was difficult to come by for a while after leaving Santa Elena, I got busy once in New York, and I’m finding myself feeling overwhelmed with a need for proper reflection.

So first, what happened after Santa Elena that made it impossible to post?  Well, in short, I slept in ten different places ten nights in a row: Santa Elena, bus, hammock, Canaima posada, Ciudad Bolivar posada, bus, Caracas, Trinidad, plane, New York (eleven if you add that the first night in New York I had no sheets).  In the waking hours of that insane week and a half, I visited Angel Falls, saw my old roommate in Caracas, met one of my best friend’s mom, ate fantastic food, and reunited with old friends and my grandparents in NYC.  I have so much to tell and write about those eleven days, but alas, even with internet the other two problems remained: being busy and overwhelmed with need for reflection.

How busy am I now?  Well, even though I’ve decided not to work this semester (my father smartly said ‘you’ll be working the rest of your life’) I’ve maintained my need for constant production with a slew of other activities.  I’m preparing for and writing my thesis, practicing piano (which I haven’t played in years), training for a half-marathon, keeping up with Spanish, recruiting for after-graduation jobs, growing Trail of Seeds, and, oh yea!, maintaining friendships and taking my last semester of classes.   That said, I have had time to watch TV and keep up with football, so I should have time to write on the blog, but those are a bit more passive.  Anyways, now I’ve adding “blogging” to the list again, and I’m very happy about that.

For those of you who actually know me, you’ll see that this level of activity isn’t really anything new.  That however, is just the problem- for basically six years I’ve had so much input and stimuli in my life, but I’ve never had enough time to really think about it all.  I go from adventure to adventure, leaving no middle period to relax and think about what I just did. 

I left home at sixteen, was holistically challenged at UWC, traveled the world, fell in love twice, made hundreds of friends, found an intellectual passion- made it into a career (or two), and all the while, ‘grew up’.  But I don’t think I’m sure about exactly what growing up really means.  I see that I’m truly beginning to leave an impact, and I am incredibly proud of that and confident that it will continue, but I’m starting to feel like my starship is on autopilot… and I want to take back the throttle.  Maybe I’m also a little scared that the autopilot could be better at reaching the stars than me.

All of this is to say that I’ve been getting nervous to write because the little reflection I do here seems to be opening a labyrinth of thought that I don’t have time or, currently, the desire to navigate.  I need much more than 30 minutes a day to think through all that has happened and everything that I want to, and can, and should do. 

Luckily, I’m pretty sure that I can secure a fulltime job, but hold off a month or two to take a vacation (not a trip, but a vacation) and think!  The blog posts from then will be amazing, I’m sure.  For now, I’ll keep myself busy, living in the present while preparing for the future- and find the best way to have blogging be not an unprepared beginning, but a beautiful prologue to the reflection that awaits.

I’m back!

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