endless ramblings on my impending future...

I'm feeling a little melancholy today. Perhaps it's because I spent some time with friends who just got back from Romania. I miss it so much. 10 days just isn't enough. Perhaps it's because a chapter of my life is closing, and I can feel myself becoming distanced from it already. Maybe it's part of not knowing what's in the next chapter. I've pretty much reached the end of all my official "plans." I guess I figured I'd be married with kids by this point and that I would follow wherever family took me. But I'm not married, and planning for marriage (at least for me) is a bit like planning for a natural disaster - I can read up all I want, practice drills, and make any and all provisions for it... but I have no clue when it's going to happen. It's time for a career now, but anything I start will have to give way for full-time mom-hood at some vague time in the future, and quite frankly, it's annoying not knowing when or how to plan. Not that I really have a lot to complain about. I have no regrets in my life so far. And I can handle ambiguity pretty well. For a while... Perhaps the melancholy has to do with the fact that I'm surrounded with lots of possibilities for the future, and I don't know which ones are viable. There's a possibility I'll be hired by an amazing non-profit agency in Idaho. Or that I'll stick around Utah and work for a professor. Or that I'll move to D.C. and check out the NGO scene there. Or that I'll move to Ecuador and continue humanitarian work there for a year or so. Or move to Romania to work with an organization I came to know there. Or move back in with my parents and flip burgers at Wendy's. Or maybe join the circus and work the side show with my amazing hitch-hiker thumb tricks. Or move to Uganda and die in the next cholera outbreak. The possibilities are seemingly endless! But which one is right?! Woe is me. What ever will become of poor MightyBob? I bet if I sit here and blog about it long enough, and if I put juuuust the right whiny tone to it, all the problems in my practically-enchanted life will melt away, and existence as I know will become absolutely perfect. I mean, it's better to have too many options than to have none at all, right? Maybe the melancholy comes from focusing entirely too much time on my own fate and what will happen to me, me, me. Anyhow, I'll keep y'all posted on the continuing saga of the "Life of Bob." And as a reward for anyone who's persevered in reading this ginormous paragraph to this point, I'll let you in on a juicy tidbit of news. I'm going to Guatemala. In May. To do anthropology research on education and globalization among the rural Maya. For 10 weeks. I'll get to connect with new people. Learn at their feet. View the world through a new lens. Absorb truth from a different culture. Bathe in a community vapor bath. Be surrounded by a people speaking in sounds I didn't know were possible to make with the human mouth. Become so confused I want to crawl into a hole and stay there. Then get back up and deal the the culture shock. The opportunity virtually fell into my lap, and I'm so excited I could wet my pants (how's that for a mood swing? Welcome to womanhood...). What is the point? The point is... the point is... what is the point? Umm... the point is that I really sincerely feel that God has led me in my life to this point, and that He will continue to guide me in it. He's been so good to me! But I wish I knew what He had planned in the fairly-short long run. Lord, grant me patience. And please hurry!