I couldn’t write for a while because everything I was concocting had to remain quiet until I informed my employers. Also, I’m not very good at being indirect or coy, so I felt a bit muffled. Then, once I was free to write, I felt like a giant container of mixed and turbulent feelings. The bosses have been informed. Two weeks before leaving my job, I’ve turned a corner. The feelings are starting to stack instead of rumbling. Hello blog. How I have missed thee. So here’s the plan, which is no longer a plan, but the shape of my new life for the next 12 months. I have set my future in motion.
In about two weeks, I leave for a Kolkata, India, where I will take a six-week class followed by one week of touring (will I finally get to see the Taj Mahal? Stay posted.). Expect lots of ruminations on life as a foreigner.
Once I come home, there will be a mad scramble for summer employment, and another summer class, and some internship projects.
Sometime in August, my three-day-a-week new internship starts, with all the corresponding excitement. (I’m really happy to be taking some time to focus on my development as a clinician, to finally be able to fully embrace my learning without juggling the demands of a full-time office job. There is the corresponding anxiety about whether or not I will find ways to make money while meeting these new obligations.)
I’ve decided I’m only allowed to fret over one thing at a time. So I’m now fretting over my seven-week trip to India. I have never been on a seven-week trip (besides my childhood summer commuting between France and the U.S. for family visits.) Now that my spring classes are finished, I can spend my leisure time trying to read up and prepare myself for this adventure. Here’s my conclusion: I cannot prepare myself. There’s no way.
I can do some online research. I can look at pictures. I can open up the encyclopedic brick that is my guidebook. I can read other student blogs. I can pile up the supplies and necessities for my trip around the apartment. But I cannot prepare in the sense that I cannot become ready. I can only go.
And that’s my feeling about this entire coming year. I will do my due diligence, but I will not be ready. I can only move forward: Go with my full heart and mind, and hope for the best.