Down to the Wire (and other cliches)

Adam called this afternoon with news of his impending promotion.  Good, because we'll soon be making a lot more money.  Bad, because without the promotion I could have stopped mulling over all this and just gotten myself ready to be poor come May.  Maybe good or maybe bad because I've got 'til perhaps only tomorrow afternoon to change my mind about going to Japan.  For three years.  Starting a year and a half from now when I may very well want to change my mind.  Or maybe I won't.

I had gotten myself to agree to Okinawa last week, then thought against it.  And then on Wednesday, sitting in my anthropology class, we listened to a lecture on Wallace.  Listed under his name were only a few brief points - when he was born, when he died, and the fact he spent 4 years in the Amazon.  Already an interesting and rare life and only 2 bullet-points in.  It struck me then that I needed as many bullet points as possible, should collect as many as I could, and Okinawa again became a possibility.  That night I talked Adam back into keeping it on the table, which brewed long enough in his mind to become his only clear choice.

Sometimes, when I think of it, the whole thing almost feels like it's medicine.  It might be hard getting it down, but it will help me in the end.

And, language-junkie me is excited about starting a new language I'll have a chance to get good at.  And the master's degree and teaching experience.  And the water so close and green.

But I'm sure once everything is final I'll start making lists of everything I'm going to miss when I'm gone.  And I'm sure I'll be leaving a big piece of myself behind somewhere, too.  But I'll have good stories to tell, and that bullet-point on the power-point slide of my life.  Those are very important.