the quarter life affair

I was at the corner place (this place with paninis, etc in Santo Spirito where I live) this afternoon getting a pizza and they were playing Had a Bad Day and it made me miss being home in the spring with my sun roof open driving through the city. And lately I find myself missing Dubai and with this new obsession with the Middle East. I want to see Damascus and Beirut and Israel and Palestine and India and I want to know what it's like to live there, just for a little while. Though that may never happen. I still haven't even gotten my ass to Istanbul or Kuala Lumpur, Saigon, Beijing, Bangkok, Hong Kong and the list goes on.

I always have my IPod on when we land or take off, it relieves my nerves, though I know I'm not supposed to have it on because my IPod could cause the plane to crash, but I did it once by accident, so now I don't really care since I survived. Since September I've been on 25 flights, countless trains, through 3 continents and roughly 12 cities. I realized my chances of dying by plane crash is probably far higher than the average persons, but then I think about flight attendants and their stats and it makes me feel a bit better.

And today, while I was in the corner place and this American song came on I found myself thinking of how much I missed home, but how much I would miss Florence all at once, and how strikingly different these places were. I could never have both for life. It's funny how I love Florence for the vegetable people in the square in the mornings, the strictly Italian food, walking to bars and walking home over the River Arno, piazza della Republica and for everything that it lacks, it offers a world which can't be found at home. And then I find myself missing the diverse culture, my honda accord, the people I've loved for years and walking to Starbucks in the middle of a sweltering summer, getting dressed up in 4 inch heels to the bars in Adams Morgan and Georgetown. Life here is so much simpler. I can't have both, and I will choose the world I grew up in, but god, I will miss the time that I have spent here dearly.

I got on the short list for fellowships with BNA and USAToday a few weeks ago. I didn't end up getting either, which wasn't entirely a surprise to me. I've never been good at interviews. Public speaking, articulation, confidence, I've always had trouble with these things. But I was thinking about it, and it's probably for the best I didn't get them because when they asked me what I wanted out of it all, I wasn't entirely honest. I said I wanted to be a journalist, to cover Capitol Hill, to cover the EU in Brussels. And though my resume may be conducive to all these things, at the end of the day, I'd be incredibly happy with my own column in the lifestyle section of some newspaper in some city I adored. And that would be enough for me. I think. But I never give that answer because I'm afraid it sounds superficial, not important enough. But who knows, with my dreams of traveling through the Middle East and Asia still need to be taken care of, I have to find a route to accomplish those things somehow.

I'm twenty-four and a half years old. I have never had a 'real' job.

I thank my parents every single day for everything that they've given me to delay the real world for as long as I have, to figure out what I want. They've given me everything they never had the chance to attain, and I owe them a lot for that.