Departure

It's the night before the journey begins. My bags are packed (10 lbs under the weight limit) and I'm ready to go.

In some ways, it's harder to leave than I expected. You start to think about all of the actuals and possibilities you are going to miss. And parting with Ariel was much harder than I expected, but we said "See you soon" and meant it - so I hope we look back on it some day as sweet sorrow only.

But, for the most part, I truly am excited for this next adventure. At college for four years and then work nearly the same, I learned so much about myself and how to be an effective, positive force in a given situation. I'm joining the Peace Corps because I want to apply that somewhere out there where the stakes are a little higher. It is selfish in a way, because there are so many worthy tasks closer to hand - but this is the way that feels right for me. I want to make a positive impact in people's lives and in their ability to improve themselves. To focus on that work and to see what I can do, I felt like I needed to take a long step away from where I am comfortable.

I don't have many specifics about the situation or the work just yet. Tomorrow is Staging - a brief orientation event - in Miami and then the following day we fly to Parimaribo, Suriname by way of the Port of Spain in Trinidad. Then it's a couple weeks of training before I start to narrow into my actual project, location, etc.

So I don't know much about my path over the next two years, just yet. I know I was on a pretty good path before I decided to join the Peace Corps and right now my plan is to come back to a version of it when I finish. I took the GMAT this past week and I will write business school applications for the Fall of 2013 (a month after I get back) while I am in South America. That's the plan, such as it is, right now.

But, for the next while, I'm going to try to steer clear of some of those larger plans where I'm still not quite sure what the underlying goal is. Instead, I'm going to focus on doing something worth doing well.