Moving Forward

Israel, and living on this Kibbutz, is by far the longest and most stationary part of my journey. I chose to do it in the middle to give me some time to think and decompress. I thought that first, I just wanted to get really far away and go to Nepal, so I wouldn't have to focus on the problems in my life I'd been obsessing over for months with no solution in sight. And that was what I needed to do. I think I just needed a break from focusing on my problems for a little while. And I did that, and it was good.

This part of my trip is supposed to be the part where I figure everything out, mourn over my losses, and decide how to move forward with the rest of my life. Before I came on my trip, I thought everything would magically make sense and fall into place in this part of my journey. But in Nepal, and here too, I've realized that perhaps those goals were far too lofty. I used to think that I absolutely HAD to figure out what my "true life passion" is and what I want to do with the rest of my life as soon as humanly possBlogger: Adventures in Faraway Places - Create Postible. This journey was, in a way, a method of trying to buy more time to accomplish something on which I felt like I was already far behind. And now I don't feel like I need to figure it all out right now. I feel like I've earned time, which is probably more precious to me than anything else right now. At the same time, I have the desire to have something concrete to show for this period on the Kibbutz; some way to prove I've accomplished something.

Have I? A few days ago, I bought my plane ticket to leave Israel and fly to Italy for the final part of my journey. I have fewer than 2 months left in Israel, and my journey is more than halfway over. I knew this would happen (everyone told me so), but it's gone by really fast. In a weird way, I do feel ready for it to be coming to and end. I miss my friends and family more than I thought I would, and I do feel ready to come back to school. I was never sure whether my lack of motivation for school and my unhappiness were due to CMU itself or more due to the death of my sister and other unfortunate circumstances I encountered last year. Now, I'm sure that the bulk of my unhappiness was due to feeling unfulfilled and uninspired by Carnegie Mellon itself. I did not end up choosing the ideal school for me, when I decided to enroll 3 years ago. But I don't blame myself for that anymore. I could never have known it would have turned out like this, and chances are I would have regretted not giving music my best shot. And let's not forget, had I not gone to CMU, I would not have ended up doing this amazing journey, which I will remember for the rest of my life.

It's scary that my journey is finishing and that I'm starting to have to think practically about what I'm going to do when I get back. A year ago, thinking about my future was one of the most terrifying and depressing things I could possibly do. I'm glad I put my future on hold, for now. But I didn't, as I'd originally planned, put my life on hold. In fact, I did the exact opposite. This IS living. My future isn't something that I can run away from, even if I pretend to. And so while I've constantly viewed this journey as running away from my life and my future, that's not really what it turned out to be. That being said, I'm starting to feel ready, finally, to return back to normalcy of a type, finish my education, and start making plans for my future. Hopefully this time, I'll be more accepting when things don't always go as planned or I decide to change something. So I know this entry was really cheezy, but writing about whatever's on my mind and processing all of this is exactly what I intended my Kibbutz time to be about. And now, I've got 1.5 more months here and 1.5 months in Italy, and I intend to make the most of them!