Instructions requested!

Don't you wish life came with a book of instructions sometimes? I spend insane amounts of time worrying about major life decisions. It's been driving me crazy. I guess it's weird to be in this chapter of your life. As an adolescent/teenager, you're expected to go to school...after that, you're expected to go to college...and after that, then what? Culture would have us believe that adulthood means that should land some an incredible job with incredible benefits, a beautiful house with a white picket fence and of course some amazing spouse.

But what if your path isn't so linear as that? There's no longer a guaranteed "next chapter" in place, like there was before. I spend so much time thinking, "Did I make the right decision in that situation? Would things be different if I had done this? Did I sabatoge this relationship or burn a bridge by doing such-and-such? Was it worth it in the end?"

A friend of mine and I were recently conversing on this topic. The focus of my stress lately has been "career-career-career," and "resume-resume-resume," and I know that it's made me considerably more irritable -- and, unfortunately, maybe a bit more self-involved -- than usual. She assured me, "Be grateful you don't have all of your important decisions already made at 27. Every moment for you is pregnant with possibility." Granted, that's easy to say...harder to accept. I'm not naturally a ruthless, cut-throat kind of person...but I want to have aspirations.

As soon as you choose one option, another one goes away. However, I have been trying to accept the fact that "real life" requires a lot of trial-and-error. You make a decision, you hope for the best...if it doesn't work out, you pick up the pieces and move on. I've heard it said that our failures in life are just as important as our successes. OK, so maybe I could've done things differently in certain areas. But don't we always make the best decision for us at any given time, based on the information at hand?

Never a dull moment

So I awoke this morning to see the city covered in white...snow, that is, for the very first time this year. Compare this season to winter 2006, which lasted well into late May as far as I'm concerned. Even though I will always prefer warm weather to cold, I certainly appreciate changing seasons, and I'd been finding the unseasonably mild temperature of the past few weeks increasingly and increasingly disturbing. This is unlike most of my students who were happy to have mild weather. Of course it would've been nice to have seen a little bit of the white stuff when there were still Christmas decorations up all over the city.

Is it just a cruel coincidence that we get an unseasonably warm winter the same year that global warming is riding high on the political agendas? Of course you can't attribute it all to global warming. Unlike most everyone I know, who seem to actually enjoy the creepily mild weather, I actually want snow this year. I'm not in the mood for the world to end JUST yet. Of course it would've been nice to have seen a little bit of the stuff when there were still Christmas decorations up all over the city.

Of course I was bad today...I've been completely red meat-free since well before the start of the new year, but my student took me to lunch today and I ordered the roast pork and dumplings. Nothing quite says "winter" to me like heavy Czech comfort food.

With winter well underway, my usual "where-the-hell-am-I-going-to" dilemma returns, like clockwork. I've decided that this is a uniquely American phenomenon. Case in point: a friend of mine recently celebrated her birthday and invited a palm reader to come and entertain her party guests. When it got to my turn, the palm reader started off with some crap about soulmates or something like that, and I quickly shut her up with: "I don't care about my love life! I want to know about my career! What will I be doing in 10 years?" After which she chuckled and said, "So you want to know about your career -- typical American!"

I've decided that 27 is a strange age. It's too late to claim that all liberal arts majors can't find fulfilling jobs, that you are just out of college, need more experience and so on. It's frightening -- I feel like I've gone through this debate time and time again -- although I know that it's bulls**t, it's hard to not to succumb to it sometimes.

At 27, you're supposed to be a person who knows what your entire career will entail, what your future financial goals are, what your relationship and/or future family planning strategy is. You're supposed to have a clean-and-cut idea of what lies ahead for you and be well on your way to be doing so. As for me, I still feel like I have to fight an uphill battle to be taken seriously sometimes -- at work, at home and so on. I still get stressed out at the prospect of balancing my checkbook. And the thing is: I know that I feel I could be completely happy being married to my career if I could find a job that I enjoy. I weigh every financial and personal decision as if it's some kind of life-or-death thing. Why is there all of this insanity in my brain??

Apparently plans for my ten high school reunion are underway. The big question looms: to attend or not to attend? Is it worth it to arrive in roughly the same weight-height proportion as high school, with nothing in the realm of material wealth or significant other to show for it? Egad -- I need more time! I was supposed to be living some glamourous life, wearing a Dolce and Gabbana tailored suit and bragging about how I won my Pulitzer on the piece I wrote for Vanity Fair or National Geographic! Sheesh!

Holiday re-cap

So it's my second Christmas here in Europe...it's funny how the holidays don't REALLY seem like the holidays when you're away from your family. And it's sort of strange...I don't think I heard "Jingle Bells," "Silent Night" or "The Twelve Days of Christmas" the entire month, for better or for worse, though I generally have no problem with holiday music. Despite the fact that the city's ex-pat community empties out during the month of December, I think we made the most of it.

Christmas Eve was spent with Kelly and Mellisa, as well as Kelly's dad who was visiting from the U.S.A. Mel and I both battled headcolds to enjoy dinner at Red Hot & Blues. On Christmas Day, I went to a dinner party hosted by my friends Jenn (who's American) and her flatmate Farrah (who's British), dragging my new roommate Scott along as well. (Funny how I seem to know a Jennifer in every city, huh?) Farrah's pals Jakub and Martina dropped by to join the festivities as well.

Anyway, Jenn tried her hand at lasagna, albeit with a Czech twist (cottage cheese and klobasa). It was interesting. True to form, I prepped spinach-artichoke dip (shocked that I could find all of the ingredients in the shops here) and Farrah's friend Jake prepped some svarak and desserts. And how many Christmas celebrations an say that they end with a dance party, courtesy of Justin Timberlake and Pink?

So that's Christmas in a nutshell...New Year's Eve was great! Kelly, Melissa and
I went up to Berlin and it was fantastic! You know it's a great city when I decide to visit twice in one year. Since we had limited time, we took a free walking tour the first day we were there. We had a great Bulgarian-Jewish tour guide named Nicholai who was really passionate about German/WWII/Communist era history and gave us tons of interesting tidbits, as well as taking us to some off-the-beaten-path places (the EXACT locale where Adolf Hitler committed suicide, which is now a parking lot, for example).

On New Year's Eve, there was an ENORMOUS street carnival in Tiergarten with a fireworks display, plenty of food, dancing, spiced wine and beer (naturally) everywhere, so we hit that on New Year's Eve and stayed out until 4 a.m.! Those Germans know how to throw a party, that's for sure! The only thing I would've changed was the hostel situtation...the three of us were packed into a room with 15 guys and one girl from Denmark who were loud, obnoxious and a little indiscreet when it came to P.D.A. By the end of the weekend the room smelled like a locker room. But hey, we were only really there to sleep, so in the long run, it wasn't so bad.

So 2007 will certainly bring changes...the outcome of which remains undeterminable at the moment. I hesitate putting anything into writing that's still uncertain...