Lost at Home

Well... Here I am back in DC. I am getting slightly confused as to which location I ought to call home. I felt very much at home when I was back in Ohio. It was great to be back with my family, even with the close quarters and short tempers that abound there. It felt amazing and comfortable to be at practice with all my friends. I felt more easily accepted than I have in quite some time. But I also felt a little lost. That is a common feeling for me these days. Luckily this isn't the suffocating, panic ridden lost that I have sometimes experienced in the past. Instead it is an irritating, buzzing feeling at the edges of my thought. Just when I start to feel settled and comfortable, there it is like an annoying mosquito. The need to slap at it is overwhelming but I cannot locate it to do so. I know my niche is out there. I know I have the ability to make a difference. I just have no idea which direction it is in. What if I make the wrong choice? What if I spread myself too thin or focus in too closely? What if I spend too much time flailing about trying to decide that I miss an opportunity? What I really want to do is just pick up and go. See the world and maybe then I would know where to focus my passions. I wish I had the money and the security to travel. One of these days I will figure it out and take off for awhile...

In the mean time, here I am. Living in someone else's apartment, caring for someone else's cats (one of which is very confused and keeps alternating between purring at me and biting me). I am working a job with no guaranteed hours and unsure whether and what rent I will be able to pay. I know virtually no one and am still rather unfamiliar with the area. And yet, I am loving it. I am still working for a well known conservation organization. I am volunteering as a keeper in the Small Mammal House and getting to do work with my monkeys and the other animals. I am living in a rather happening area of DC for comparatively next to nothing rent. I have a growing network of friends who are really cool people that I am glad to know. I am healthy and young and ready to take what life can throw at me. I know I might struggle a bit with loneliness as the grey winter skies move in and I am not with my family for the holidays... But I look forward to the occasional break in the clouds when the sun glints off the freshly fallen snow and makes the world glow. Those are the moments that make everything worthwhile.

To my family and friends, and heck to anyone else who needs to know they are truly special: I love you. Thank you for the difference you make in this world. You are my moments of sun shining on a blanket of snow.

*huggles*