Dear Internet,
That's a good fun fact, isn't it? Anyway, happy new year! It has been quite some time, hasn't it, Internet?
So Ben came to visit me in Helena over Thanksgiving, which was nice. We had dinner with the other VISTAs and went hiking a couple of times. He helped me dogsit for one of the attorneys in my office and I even got my car stuck in some snow for a few hours. It was cool to see him as a college boy and he sounds like he's having a great time in Oregon.
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| Ben & Sula |
I mentioned snow; it's been pretty cold but beautiful here. It was 3 degrees when I walked to work this morning. Cheers.
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| The St. Helena Cathedral |
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| On my walk to work |
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| Outside my window one morning. |
Halfway through December, I flew home to Northern Virginia to hang out with my family for Christmas. We celebrated my Mom's birthday with a fancy Italian dinner and drove down to South Carolina to see my grandparents, which was also great (and warm). It was a quiet, nice time.
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| Mom with birthday cookies at the restaurant. |
After Christmas, I flew up to Vermont to meet Will's family. They were super nice and welcoming, and I had a great time. The first day I was there, Will and I went snowshoeing; the second, cross-country skiing at
Smuggler's Notch; and the third, we hiked Camel's Hump (the third-highest mountain in Vermont and the one on which Will's family lives) and sledded down it.
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| Camels Hump is on the Vermont state quarter. We sledded about... here. |
That night, we drove over to New Hampshire to see our friend June from ERT. The next morning, we went snowmobiling with June and her dad. So many things I've never done before! It was awesome. To cap it off, the next day, back in Vermont, Will taught me to shoot a .22 rifle and a 20-gauge shotgun. Scary! But cool to know how.
Finally, we got up at 4am on my last day in Vermont to drop Will off at his Wilderness EMT class at
SOLO in New Hampshire, then I flew back to Montana.
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| June, me, and Will with the two (second one is cleverly hidden) snowmobiles. |
So I'm back in Montana and that's about it for updates. I'm looking forward to Will's moving to Helena in about a month; until then, I'll be bowling and book clubbing and cross country skiing in Yellowstone this weekend (with the same attorney, Caroline, that Ben and I dogsat for back in November). I'll also fly to Jacksonville, Florida in two weeks so that I can warm up. Just kidding. It's for the
Technology Initiative Grant (TIG) conference. And to warm up.
In other news, I submitted my application to Berkeley yesterday! Berkeley Law has been my dream school for probably three or four years now and it's exciting to finally be in the running. It's a long shot that I'll get in (about 270 in 7,000 actually), but, you know, someone has to go there. It might as well be me. Anyway, I'll hear by April.
I've been thinking about what it would be like to go there, and you know, in the last few months or year(s), I've been realizing how fickle dreams can be. For example, I used to picture myself as an international jet-setter, living in New York City part time and Paris/Istanbul/Mumbai/Beijing/etc. the rest of the time. The picture in my head was a sort of cross between Carrie Bradshaw and Carmen Sandiego: glamorous and worldly and constantly on the go.
When I studied abroad in Germany (an event I pictured as just the start of many long stints abroad), I was startled by the feeling of homesickness. I was
never homesick (not even when I was seven and went to Girl Scout sleepaway camp and all the other girls alternately gossiped about Jonathan Taylor Thomas and cried for home). The feeling caught me completely off guard. I actually didn't know what was wrong with me at first - was I coming down with something? Anyway, the point I'm making is that since then, I've begun to realize (1) that moderation is key. Comfort zone + novelty = balance. (2) that my dreams might not be quite what I thought they were.
When I visited San Francisco back in November, I found myself actually overwhelmed by the amount of
stuff available. It was like having too many good options in a restaurant. You find yourself completely incapacitated and staring at the waiter like a guppy. Or maybe that's just me. Whatever.
I missed Helena. It's the first small city I've lived in (I'm purposely not counting Ashburn or Elon, because both are really just suburbs), and I like being able to walk everywhere. I like that traffic is not a huge problem. I like that there is a given number of restaurants, museums, and theaters, and that it's actually feasible and financially conceivable for me to visit all of them in a year. I like that I can have "regular" places without feeling like I'm missing out on other things. It's comfortable. It's a new thing (like the homesickness thing) that I've learned about myself, and that forces me to reassess my dreams.
Maybe what I'm really finding out is that I'm a crotchety old lady at heart. I like to feel comfortable where I am, not constantly stimulated and out of my element. I don't thrive on change as much as I would maybe like to. I like a certain degree of novelty, but not too much. Perhaps that's the issue: the gap between who I'd like to be and who I'm finding that I really am. I wonder which one of the two should be writing my dreams.
Regardless of everything I just said, I would be ecstatic to get in. I might think harder than I would have two years ago about accepting, but I'm 99% sure I would still do it. On the other hand, I'm honestly not worried or nervous about it. Maybe the fickleness of my dreams doesn't mean that they've changed, but that I can see them without tunnel vision. Berkeley is not the only option. It's a damn good one, but I'm pretty sure I could be happy going to school here in Montana, or in Seattle, or in any number of other places. There are, I've learned, a number of ways to be happy.
Anyway, all of this pondering is assuming that I'm accepted, which (I just did the math), I have about a 3.8% chance of. So.
I'm realizing as I write that what I'm getting at is bigger than Berkeley. It's the whole life/future reassessment that's kind of been going on in the back of my head for a while now. So, well, now you know.
Cheers, everyone, and happy new year!
xoxo Liz.
