where to next?

My boss claims there's a possibility that this job, which I signed on to for 8 months could go into September. While this is not a bad thing, I'm thinking that my days of schlepping my car full of surveys, boxes of files, measuring equipment and other health supplies, might end sooner than September.

The idea, however, of voluntarily putting myself back in market for a new job is gut-wrenching and, to say the least, two steps back. In the last six months I've accomplished more than I thought would happen with this job and with my life, but as many of my close friends start off in new directions next month I am stuck, wasting away in my 2001 dirty Grand Prix.

Three of my friends are jetting out of the country for some much needed R&R as well as a little boost for their resumes. One is already gone, off to spend the next 27 months in the Peace Corps in Zambia and my closest friend, who was my saving grace in Spokane is off to a new job in Seattle (actual Seattle, none of that metro area bullshit) leaving me to be the only one of my recently graduated friends still living at home under the comfort of my parents.

I talked to the Peace Corps recruiter Monday and then again today to confirm that my file is officially on hold until I find out if I got into graduate school. I won't find that out until March. I sit here content, but ready to go and do something interesting. I was flipping through my pictures from Cairo wishing that I could somehow go backwards and do it all over again. Maybe I wouldn't be here, in Everett, in a hotel, waiting. Maybe I'd be in another country, which is where I'd rather be.

Today my excitement consisted of walking to door of someone's house who proudly displayed a sticker supporting the NRA with an extra note "what homeland security used to be." awesome. I was shaking, terrified that an enormous hunting dog would hurl through the screen door taking me out along with all my 'official' paperwork and dignity.

Let me note, I am not sad, nor am I depressed or anything lame like that, I'm just on hold...listening to that methodical and thoughtless music patiently (impatiently) waiting to have other people make decisions about my life.

On a good note, I've gone running every day this week and I'm surprisingly excited to go again today. Even if it does involve running back and forth on freeway underpasses terrified that I might get clipped down by some creep and raped by homeless people. I think this makes me run faster, and without headphones, like in the old days.

As I was leaving my smoke-soaked hotel this morning carrying my cup bestowing the log Seatle's Best proudly, the front desk woman said as I walked out the door "you drink a lot of coffee." The front desk woman was not at the front desk, but planted, in her usual spot, 25 feet from the entrance sucking in and then blowing out her last bit of integrity. Her hair is helmeted on by what I think is the military's best bet for armor, the shiney remnants of hairspray accentuate the two small locks of hair that come from the middle of her head which she clearly takes special care to pull out reminding me gravely of seventh grade, the mid-nineties and a red-haired catfish. Point being, I think her vices are worse, or, at least, many, and if coffee is the only thing that makes me look like an addict then I'm alright with that.

I'm off to read some in the Seattle sun and then run, evading the terrifying creepers that hide in the darkness of Everett. :)