Perhaps Not Quite as Nice as I'd Hoped...

I was heading for my room, when I saw something skitter across the hallway in front of my room, and dart out of sight. It was either a small rat or a large mouse. Neither option makes me feel great, but I suppose that’s life. If I see one in my room, then the management and I are going to have some words, but for the moment, there’s nothing to be done about it. However, presently it’s just one (and I know full well that if you see one it means that there could easily be 100 that you can’t see – let’s ignore that for the time being), and it’s not in my room. That I know of.

I got up early this morning to work out, figuring that if my cold isn’t going to go away quietly, then I will just have to beat it into submission. I think it actually helped, as I’m feeling a bit better today. Still fuzzy-headed, but better. I finished up a report last night after I got back from dinner, so that’s good. I decided to re-read it in the cold light of day and make sure it sounded coherent before I submitted it, but it’s good to have it out of the way. I am all about the multitasking these days. I’m trying to do preliminary work on a domestic project on which I’d be working if I were home. But in an effort to prove that I am, in fact, reliable, despite my somewhat unreliable schedule, I have offered to complete a few assignments for other projects while I’m here. I’m hoping that this will be good in that “developing professional relationships” sense – because I’m kinda getting tired of falling asleep in front of my laptop.

Okay, I’m trying to be positive about this whole Yemen thing, since my boss sent me an e-mail saying I was urgently needed there. This is frustrating for several reasons, chief amongst them being that I am trying to develop more work for myself with the domestic division, and I can’t bail out on commitments that I’ve made – although my boss has made it clear to me that, as far as he’s concerned, my international work comes first. I’m still not clear as to how much I can turn down projects or not – I don’t really feel like I’m at the point in my career where I can say “thanks, but no thanks”. But I’d like to actually try being home for a while; it feels like I’ve been gone a lot for the past six months or so. Probably because I have been gone a lot for the past six months or so.

If I do end up having to go, and it’s not for short trips, then I will also be stopping somewhere interesting on the way home, as is rapidly becoming a tradition for me. A quick glance at airfares shows that two options I could have are Paris or Frankfurt. Hmm…I’ve never been to Germany, and more time in Paris is never a bad thing. From a neutral perspective, if I didn’t have other commitments, the project sounds like it would be really good professional experience, fascinating work, but I’m also thinking of what life was like in Pakistan, and the whole “house arrest” thing isn’t too appealing. However, it’s entirely possible that this project will be set up differently, with more support and such. I don’t really know, and Yemen has a healthy-sized entry on the State Department’s Travel Warnings website, so regardless of how the project is being run, I’m not likely to be able to head down to the market by myself if I want to. I’m not likely to be able to do a whole lot by myself if it involves going outside my residence, in fact.

It’s funny, but even re-reading what I’ve written over the last few days, it is so clear to me that I still have no idea what I want my life to look like in all but the most abstract terms. I want to be home, to spend time with my friends and family, to be involved in my community and not just be a visitor in my own life. But at the same time, I’m talking about possibly moving to Europe for a few years. If I’m really, really honest – I’d love to have the chance to do all of those things, and I suppose there’s nothing that really says they’re mutually exclusive desires, but they’ll have to go in a sequence, since I can’t be home and abroad all at once. Then it’s a matter of trade-offs, as most things are in life. So where does that leave me? Sitting in bed, ready to go to sleep at 9 pm, and rambling. I’m going to chalk it up to the head cold.