It has been quite a while since I have written a blog post which is due rather honestly to the inconsistency of the last few weeks. Not only am I frighteningly aware of the last six months of my service but also zealously awaiting a few adventures that I have been planning since early last year. My time limited, my intentions many, my conviction wavering. Should I be putting my everything into the now? Should I be simultaneously completing my projects while preparing for my future once I return? How can one ‘be in the now’ but also make sure that they are easing into the next phase of their life properly? This is my current predicament.

So far I have decided to tie up the loose ends of my VAST Grant by offering a computer training course which will take place this Saturday, continue to assist my counterpart and facilitate the ongoing activities of the Ministry of Health and attempt to wrap up most of this years’ work before my holiday in Tanzania and NYE in Cape Town. My last three months in country are looking to be quiet and uneventful, and I am truthfully looking forward to that. I hope that I can ready my office and my coworkers for the arrival of my replacement but also tackle any last minute requests that will inevitably come my way.

At this junction in my life I cannot help but feel an overwhelming sense of accomplishment mixed instantaneously with a gripping fear of how I proceed from here. Earlier this year I began to question the probability of reconciling my two realities. How do I continue to appreciate the mundane? What do I ready my mind and body to accept as a shock? Where do I turn to when the people in my life – the people I left for the past two years – are not able to relate to my experiences and thus my inescapable tribulations? How do I merge the American past, my Peace Corps past and my present into one livable reality that makes the best of all realities? With what example do I begin to understand this fractured image of self?

While this polemic continues to rage in my head, I cannot help but acknowledge that these sentiments are a result of my decision to, for the first time, venture out on my own trajectory. Not only do I take pleasure in the tangential nature of conversation with an old friend but also that of a person following their heart and allowing the universe to shepherd them unquestioningly to the next chapter of their life. Had it not been for Amelia’s advice to “[…] establish yourself in a place you think you’d like to end up for a while,” I would not have created such a vivid picture of where I’d like to go from here. If it wasn’t for my position in VSN I would not have been at the TDE Workshop where I first met Amelia. If it wasn’t for my urge to be the best that I can be in anything I do, I would not have had such a strong intent on throwing myself wholly into the Peace Corps experience, thus joining VSN. If I hadn’t first joined the Peace Corps I would be unable to join VSN. Had I not had parents who told me to “just do what makes you happy,” I would not have had the courage and support necessary to defy the expectations of our society to continue schooling or get a humdrum job and instead join the Peace Corps.

Though I could continue with this course, hindsight being 20/20, and relay to you my current position/situations/reality as if they were beads on a necklace, one coming right after another as instinctively as droplets of water down a pane of glass unable to resist the laws of gravity, surface tension and the path of least resistance; I would rather leave you to question your own place and time relative to the ways in which you have determined your future and been influenced by the structured ambiguity of the universe.