Wishing and hoping and planning and dreaming

The complete inappropriateness of starting this blog at this time does not escape me. Most people like, wait to start a blog at least until they get accepted to the Peace Corps, right?

I can't help, however, feeling a great need to talk - to expel some of these fears and frustrations that I've been feeling the past few months. Then maybe when and if I do go, I can look back at this recorded trash and feel silly. And all my friends and family can look at this and roll their eyes, saying they knew all the time everything would be fine.

So, the Peace Corps. That bastion of good-deededness. Or something like that.

What's the interest that I have in joining? I've got a great life in a city I love, a great job. There is no good reason to leave my life.

Except.

I'm a map girl. I love maps. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time looking at globes, even naming my dolls after places (Ekaterina and Tehran were quite the couple)...

This past Thanksgiving I was at my friend Maggie's parent's house, and they owned one of those globes that shows where all the mountains and valleys and peaks in the world are, and I sat there and traced the outline of the earth's platonic structure, remembering all those places I'd always wanted to go.

When I was a teenager, I had this romantic ideal that I'd be able to take off and wing it, perhaps meeting some sinfully rich man to fund these grand adventures. Life doesn't work out like that, except for in those romance novels that I started reading way too young (thanks, my sister).

Now I'm 27, and I know it's stupid to say this, but damn close to 30. If I'm going to do this, I pretty much have to do it now. And I'm kind of ashamed to say I feel like I've got waay too much hope riding on it already.

I've already started to think - we'll, if I don't get in, I suppose I could go teach English or something for a year, right? But that's not what I see happening.

Usually things in my life have worked out the way that they're supposed to, so I suppose I'll just have to wait and see if this does the same thing.