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sipping mint juleps Unlike the past two days I could think clearly today and do something vaguely productive with the day. Staying at my place also helped that cause. It felt good, but there was still one problem and that would be that it was nice outside. Yes, I said that it was nice outside and that can definitely be a problem. When the sun is shining and the weather is warm the urge to sit outside and do next to nothing becomes incredibly hard to resist. Actually that is my biggest complaint about summer itself. Summer here in Wisconsin is something that some people dream about through the long dreary winter and then complain about when it finally gets here. I don't quite fit into that category because I love winter and don't mind the cold, but summer does still cause some indecision on my part. I know that there I things to do yet I also feel that I should just be soaking up the sun and lazy heat before it disappears again. Not only do I enjoy winter, but I also love the changing seasons and can't understand how people can live where it is hot all year round. Yes, they say that one gets used to it, but I'd rather put on a sweater than feel my brain melt all year long. Right or wrong I sometimes suspect that the heat makes people more sluggish and a little slower mentally. Of course that speaks volumes about the South. Putting aside that Northern prejudice of mine, one doesn't hear that many news stories about crimes of passion being committed in the dead of winter. More often than not they take place in the muggy heat of some summer night. ... Now that I've been home for two weeks I should really start thinking about what I want do the rest of the year. Yes, there are only six months left until Christmas and I leave on another trip before then, but that still leaves me with a large amount of free time. Of course I knew it would be this way before I left for Europe and part of me honestly likes that open ended aspect of it all. Oh, there are plans to go back to school for a new program in July. Plus that should lead into another semester this fall, but at the moment work seems to be all that I have to fill my day and that fact bothers me. As I have said so many times before work has always and probably will be until I leave my current job, the least important part of my life. My job pays the bills and does little else for me. I wish I could fully relate how crushing work feels to me after coming back from Europe. Everyone there is exactly the same as they were before I left. I however feel different. After seeing seven new European countries how can I not feel different about who I am? I have seen places that no one else at work has seen. I have done things that no one else at work has done. Being trapped within those four walls for forty plus hours a week seems more ridiculous to me than it ever did before. I almost feel as though I am wasting my time there. Once again I want something more from life. Now having said all of that I am not about to quit my job tomorrow. Oddly enough my fourth anniversary there will be at the end of August and I sometimes wonder how I managed to stay with the company that long. This is the longest job that I have ever held and if someone would have told that when I was hired years ago I would have laughed. I don't want this to sound like a long drawn out whine, but this is very much where I am at at the moment. Suddenly in the middle of what should be the most relaxing time of year, I am faced with making some long range decisions. I wish that I could say I'll be quitting my job next spring, but that isn't a certainty. I wish that I could say that a year from now everything in my life will be different, but I can't say that with any amount of certainty either. Hopefully things will be different in the near future, because I can honestly say that five years at my current job is not a goal of mine. Reaching that milestone that does very little for me except maybe give me another week of vacation a year. So here I am torn between planning for tomorrow and trying not to rush my life. Somehow that seems to be the way that I view life. I either have these phases where everything is almost larger than life than it goes back to being so ordinary that I almost feel as though I am being punished. Obviously I would love to go to New Zealand tomorrow and will continue to plan that trip in the background, but I also need to focus on something more immediate in my life. Yes, I know that my life is far better than what some other people have and I have seen evidence of that in Europe, but at the same time it is my life and I want to get as much out of it as possible. Isn't that the American dream? Can't my life be more than a cliche and or a statistic? Okay. I'll make one grand prediction and or wish about my life and then shut up for the day although saying all of this makes me feel great. I honestly hope to be gainfully employed outside of the United States by this time next year. I know that that is a possibility, but now it's a matter of seeing if I can make it happen. It feels so good to talk about more than the weather or pop culture.
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