Traveling Beans

The After, After-Party

What now. I wonder if some of you have faced that question yet, and how. I hear some of you are fortunate enough to to be sure of what your next continent will be, but for those of us who are unemployed or have no real plan in tow, it's a little scary. Is it maybe scarier than when everyone first touch their feet on the ground of a new world? Or is it just that anything new is scary? I have had a different kind of year --I got to live in one place with a regular gig and the same reliable faces for 12 months, so maybe that's why I'm feeling that, but I don't think I'm entirely alone. So what is it?

Whatever it is from, fear or anxiety of the unknown or uncertain can be taken on similarly --with a bit of risk and constant questioning. It's what I learned shifting through Kristofer's fancy new Watson-line hero card collection. I was a bit envious that he got to meet all ya'll, but it was good to know (more than good) that there are people out in the world asking questions and making connections. Even though I couldn't go to the conference or a fraction of those places in the world, I could read about it and connect to it long enough to ask my own questions. Isn't that what we're all trying to do on this earth?

So, I have returned back to summer. I have some of the same uncertainties of the future in my heart, a similar loneliness I felt when I left last summer --a solitariness that comes from knowing that the next risk I take will be my own. But, I have new questions and universal truths that other traveling beans have shared, inspired, offered up. And that reminds me...at times there's a shared solitariness in the world, shared joys, and ways too keep on going.

posted by jacquelina @ 4:40 PM