Finished with that section…

Today was my last day of work at Vision 21.  I have been involved with Vision 21 in some capacity or another since two months after arriving in the U.K., so it feels somewhat momentous to be done with it.  There’s nothing but a week with Angus and a bunch of packing - and a flight or two - standing between me and my arrival in Boston.

... About which I have mixed feelings.  As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before.  But one thing which occurred to me recently was this: for the majority of the last six years of my life, what I have been doing with my life has been secondary to where I was doing it.  You know, the whole “living abroad” thing put jobs, etc., into shadow.  Now, and for the foreseeable future (though who can foresee very far into the future, really?), I will be living in the US again.  Location will no longer really be all that remarkable, wonderful though Boston is.  For the first time in… well, a very long while… I will be defined by what I choose to do, rather than where.  I haven’t had that kind of definition since I declared my major at Reed, really.

It leaves me feeling uncertain about myself.  I know that I can work hard if I need to or am sufficiently motivated to - three marathons (whatever the effects) have proven that.  And I would like to believe that I can, well, make a difference.  Cheesy though it sounds, I really would like to change the world (even a small bit of it) for the better.  Now starts the time when I have to try and prove that I can.  Prove that… I don’t even really know what I want to prove.  All I know is that I want to prove SOMETHING, something to make me feel a little less like I’m just coasting through life, and more like I’m actually contributing actively, rather than passively, to the general happiness/goodness/wellness of the world.  Does that sound hopelessly naive?  You know, actually, don’t answer that question (those few of you who are reading this).  Even if I end up not being able to make an appreciable difference, I want to know that I tried.  So it doesn’t matter if it’s naive.