Where oh where...
has Maureen been?Well, since it's been about 3 months since I last blogged, you can imagine that answer is pretty long. But actually, there is a very short answer. I'm back in the US. Living with my mother and working at a restaurant.Whaa? What happened to Cairo?That's where the explanation gets a little more difficult. You see, I found myself in a situation where I was soon to run out of money. I had told myself that when that happened, I would go home. However, somewhere along my journey I became invested in the idea of making it to Cairo. This made it very difficult to "give up". I am not a quitter.But you have to go with the flow of life. This is easier said than done, since there are always options and ways to force yourself into things. For instance, I could have gone back to Zambia to work for a backpackers, even though Zambia wasn't the place I felt I needed to be. Or I could have begged my friends and family for money, but that idea made me a little sick to my stomach.Finally it came down to what so many of us need to do more often- review my goals and motivations for traveling. Why was it that I didn't just go home after leaving Madagascar? What did I envision for myself?It seems there are always conscious and subconscious reasons for doing things. In this instance I consciously thought, well I don't want to go back to the US jobless and live with my mom. Plus, I've always wanted to travel through Africa. I'll do that for a while, apply for jobs in the meantime, and go back when I find something. Subconsciously I knew that I had not achieved the level of personal growth that I had hoped to reach from my experience living abroad. When I realized this, I thought about the personal growth I had accomplished since beginning my journey, and I was pretty happy with what I found.I realized something else, and that is I REALLY love traveling. Lots of people do, although not everyone is cut out for the kind of traveling where you sometimes have to sleep wherever you can find a place, eat whatever food is available, and wave down a truck to get a ride. I live for this kind of travel, and I'm ready to take the steps to find a way to do it professionally. I'd like to continue to pursue photography and video. I may go back to school to study geography or anthropology, or I may just look for guiding jobs since I've always loved doing that. I knew at the time, however, that there were things I needed to do back in the US to prepare for this new kind of journey.So here I am. Yes, living with my mom at the age of 30 is a challenge, but I keep my goals clear in my mind. I was fortunate that my years of restaurant work in college landed me a job right away (some skills are useful, no matter what the economy is like). Living in the Miami metro area is expensive, but I'm doing my best to find free/cheap ways to have fun (don't worry, I'll totally share them with you).I'm also not going to give up blogging. I am giving up the practice of writing the initial blog in Word, reading, waiting, re-reading, maybe eventually posting, but probably not. I wrote a blog about my return to the US 2 months ago, and never posted it! From now on, I type online and post it right away. I'm just going to let my brain flow, and trust that it won't be completely stupid. Oh boy.