Looking Forward

So I've just come back from my staff retreat... and we finally broached the topic of me staying on after the completion of my fellowship in September this year. We were busy making a Work Plan and also an operational budget - ack, so we even decided what my salary would be.... a Thai salary... remember, I work at a local NGO.

Anyways, this is a conversation I've been prepared for... my happiness here as expressed in my last post, is a complete 180 from everything I've known for the past three years, so if its not broke, don't mess with it. I love the city of Chiang Mai, I've got great friends, I like my work, I've achieved a work-life balance --- things that are all far from certain in the US for me. But still committing to a stable life is a scary scary thing for me. Especially to an adult life. Cause despite my predominant "live-in-the-moment" philosophy, occasionally I try to imagine what direction my life is going to go for the next five years and there are all those annoying background concerns about career and money and family.... how am I going to create a savings? How will I pay my loans? Am I too far from my family? When and how am I ever going to think about having my own children? what kind of job do i want next? for the long run? can i jump fields?

So anyways --- I have committed for another three months - with the anticipation that I'll have to make a decision about the whole of 2010 soon as well. I know I want this, so I don't really question what I'll do, but I do get slight bouts of anxiety considering how its all going to turn out. Its part of my contradictory personality, I finally get it about myself. And with new friends its a hard thing to express, even with old friends from time to time.

Anyways, the byproduct of looking forward is that I think I am hitting the crossroads where I'll stop looking back more and more... stop comparing... stop remembering and I think that means that I almost at the point where I let it all go.