What do your dreams look like now?

One thing I've been grappling with -- sometimes it's been outright struggle -- is that things change. Life, families, plans, commitments... things change. Things and people and places don't turn out the way I thought they would. People come and go. Politics happen. Shit goes down. (Excuse my language, Mema, but it's true.)

I've noticed over the last few years that some members of my immediate family (who shall remain nameless) are not so comfortable with this, and I haven't been, either. I'm lucky that my parents have been married since they were 17. We didn't move around a lot when I was a kid. Little changed. It was a great, stable, secure way to grow up and I am eternally thankful for that, but I think I bought the mythical image of the 1950s Camelot-like, suburban, nuclear family hook, line and sinker. The thing is: it was a myth and I haven't always felt equipped to deal with change. In fact, change has seemed bad. Funny -- you know, it's not bad... it's just change. It hasn't seemed that way til recently. What felt like failure now seems like adventure and opportunity. Thank goodness for that.

Stefan said something great the other day when he was here. He said, "Getting divorced was totally unnecessary, but useful." Useful for radical growth and development, he meant, and it's true. We wouldn't be the people we are today without it.

That was all sort-of a preceding tangent for what I really want to say: For years I've said there's one job out there that's my dream job. I've waited; I've applied for jobs I thought were similar; I wrote to the institution when I heard that it might open up last year... and last night I saw my dream job posted online.

Only you know what? I don't think it's my dream anymore, not right now anyway. I don't want to live in Amherst, MA in 2006. Is it just that I'm afraid I wouldn't get it anyway? (Is it like not trying at singing that way?) I don't think so... I think my dreams look different now. My dreams have Europe in them...