Spinning around to reach full circle

Call it coming full circle or something.

I opened up my computer, deciding again to write. I then looked at that plane shaped icon on the monitor in front of me, to find I am once again hovering over Lake Michigan, 37,000 feet this time. And Wild World started playing in my ears once again.

And my head is all muddled.

Perhaps I expected these trips to help resolve all this uncertainty, this stomach tightening ambiguity that makes what used to be statements suddenly become punctuated with huge bold question marks. But there was no real epiphany. None of those movie-perfect revelations in it all becomes clear, that this is where I’m supposed to be.

I briefly thought I might have found it in one city, navigating through deliciously pulsating neighbourhoods. As I tend to do when I develop a crush on a city, I began the detailed process of imagining myself living on the 5^th floor of a specific building and deciding where I would shop for groceries. It didn’t hurt that the placement I was interviewing for looked absolutely dreamy on paper. But it wasn’t so swoonworthy in the pain in the ass world we call reality. It felt overly competitive, painfully bureaucratic, yet hypocritically disorganized.

And then the programs that made me especially giddy are in cities without that spark. One is a city I already spent a handful of years in, which, though convenient and reasonably effortless, seems devoid of any sense of adventure. And one is just really damn cold.

So, while there is clearly some indication of the right direction to go, I kind of hoped I wouldn’t have to go through that painful formalized step-by-step decision making process. I wanted to just know.

Really, though, this is such a silly debate this is to be having with myself. I still could end up at any of them, and I could make my own little life there for a year. I would learn immense amounts from any of them, and it would still be a pretty epic success to end up at any of them. And, after all, it is just a year.

I think I need to come to terms that major life choices don't operate like the quintessential lightbulb above the head. They are never so clear and instantaneous. Real life doesn't operate by love-at-first-sight rules.