I Wanna be in the Here and Now

I met a girl on Saturday who leaves for The World Race (from here on out WR...it's long to type) on Oct. 1st.  October 1st.  She seems so excited and so ready and I really hope that if this is what I do I will feel in her same shoes.  I'm not sure I will.  I was able to spend about half an hour talking with her at this fundraiser dinner her friends were hosting for her (one of her friends is the friend who told me about this so if it weren't for Haile doing this amazing thing and my friend thinking I could hack it, I would still be wandering aimlessly wondering what to do).  She is so focused on the here and now.  She is ready to be in a new country, serving the Lord in a new way.  I get the feeling she always lives in the here and now.  I get stuck in the future.  More specifically I get stuck worrying about the future.

People keep saying how proud and amazed they are that I'm even considering this.  It's weird because I know many of my friends could do this, they just don't see it in themselves.  It's not the doing that scares me or seems like something to be proud of since we can all do it.  The scary part is the coming home.  I keep thinking (and worrying) about what will I do with my life when I get back.  It will be like a year just disappeared.  I will be jobless, homeless and sallie mae is always going to be there knocking on my door.  I'll probably move back home with my mom--at the age of 31 and get some random job meant for a 20 year old until I can figure some things out, all while trying to readjust to American culture after being gone for 11 months.  Seriously?  Seriously?  How do you even come back to that?  I cried in a supermarket after I was gone for 6 weeks to Eastern Europe.  I'm going to be a hot-mess.  An unemployed hot mess who still lives with her parents.  Can't wait to share that tidbit at my class reunion. Ok that last part was totally sarcastic and off the cuff because I do have to keep in mind that I will have the opportunity to TRAVEL THE WORLD!!!!  So I wasn't a hot mess my whole life.

I wonder how I can get out from the future and live in the here and now.  How can I focus of what an awesome experience this is going to be??  Maybe when/if I get accepted that will make it real.  My interview is tomorrow at 2pm and they say 7-10 days after that I'll find out.  Fingers crossed my friends, fingers crossed.