Anyone who has talked to me in the past few weeks has listened to me throw out endless possibilities of what I might be doing for the next few months. Maybe I'll go to the Olympics. Maybe I'll extend my trip in Israel until September. Maybe I'll come home early and take whatever job I find. Maybe I'll use the rest of my money to run away to Kenya. Okay, okay, that last one was never really a possibility but a girl can dream.
The point is that my mental space has been a mess. I've been agonizing over each decision in turn and there have been so many possibilities and uncertainties that it seemed impossible to choose. I had plenty of ideas of things I could do but none of them was a real offer. Until I got an offer from Heifer International to work as a farm and kitchen volunteer at Overlook Farm (their educational farm in Massachusetts). I would be working there from August until December and I would get a free place to stay and five meals a week with everything else being paid out of my $14 a day stipend.
My initial thoughts were: This is wonderful. Working with and International NGO that does work with hunger relief, community development, etc. A dream come true.
And then my brain started to go back and forth: I'll be broke again. But shouldn't I be willing to be poor for something I'm passionate about? But what about paying off my student loans that start accruing interest in November? Well I have enough money to do it through the end of the year and then I can defer payment for Peace Corps. Well what if I don't get into Peace Corps? Etc. etc.
Literally I have had nothing else on my mind for days which is ridiculous because things here have been relatively busy. At a certain point though, I started adding up the cost of buying winter clothes. Now this is silly because I also applied to a job in Alaska for goodness sake. And if you think buying a whole new wardrobe for winter is expensive for a gig in Massachusetts think about how expensive it would be to completely relocate to Alaska. I was trying to convince myself not to do this so badly that I was adding up the price of winter clothes to add to the "cons" list.
The whole point is that nothing that is a concrete option right now feels just right but I have to take things one step at a time and my gut tells me that working with Heifer, as wonderful as an experience as it might be, might leave me more stressed and messy in the end than I am now. Whether I get a January Peace Corps placement or not, I can't be in my current mental state. I need to have more calm in my life. Be more prepared.
So here are the absolute plans for the near future:
In ten days I leave for Germany. I bought myself a roughly $600 (all expenses) birthday present that I can't really afford in the form of two weeks in Germany and England. To be fair, brodre's birthday present to me of a Ryan Air flight from Berlin to Stansted helped a whole heck of a lot. [[speaking of... thanks for making my dream of going to the summer olympics come true, brodre!]] I will spend a week hitching around Germany with Keki Bender who I am thrilled to be seeing again after two years. Soul mates are hard to come by and the thought of never seeing Keki in person again broke my heart.... so here I am with a ticket to see her and my brother at the same time! And then a flight to London to see Katie Lower (another great love of my life). Did I mention that the OLYMPICS are there? I return to Israel on August 4 and I leave Israel on August 7. I thought a lot about extending another month and staying here for pretty much free but I won't get anything more out of this trip by staying another month. I won't properly appreciate things here when I'm worrying about my affairs in the US. I will be sad to leave Israel but it's the right thing to do and hopefully Israel will always be here for me to come back to.
And that's all I have. See, now that I know what I'm not going to be doing in the Fall, I can start seriously job searching for what I could do. It might be working at Mellow Mushroom in Austin (yeah... it's really a possibility) or as a secretary for the USDA in Alaska. Either way, I will be doing something that is going to get rid of these loans (read: burdens) so that I can start really living my life. I might apply to grad school in case I don't get a January placement (hopefully, the Peace Corps will be able to give me a few months notice). Depending on if/when/where I get a job I will be driving back to California in August to get my wisdom teeth out and maybe my knees taken care of. These are things I'm still worried about but I'll have to take them one day at a time. No more panic and stress.
Thanks to everyone who's been listening to me go back and forth on all of these issues (special kudos to Carrie Gaynor for her tolerance of my super long email rants).... I think I've got this whole life changing decision making thing down, now.
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