Home.

After about 19 hours on airplanes and airports, I arrived at home last week Wednesday. Thanks to a judicious dose of Tylenol-PM, I actually wasn't all that tired when I landed in Brussels, which was refreshing - I never usually sleep on planes and those couple hours really made a difference.

The past week has been spent figuring out what to do with all this sudden spare time I have. This sounds like a non-issue, but it isn't to me. I'm literally so anxious that being busy ALL THE TIME is the only thing that keeps me grounded, and after the craziest semester of my university career, the sudden sense of nothingness is very hard for me to handle. I do have some things planned - I'm going to visit a couple of my best British friends in June, then in July I'll be going to New York with my parents and to Denmark to visit my Vikingpixie, and in August I'll be volunteer teaching for two weeks. But especially the next month won't be easy. I've been looking around a little for jobs, but there's really not that much being offered at this time of year in terms of student/holiday jobs, and though I'll send my CV to a few places this week, I don't have much hope. So I fill my days organizing my books, working on my Hebrew, perhaps learning some more Russian, running, watching Designing Women and watching movies. This, obviously, isn't a bad existence, but it's strange.

I have a bad habit of second-guessing myself and my choices whenever my life reaches a temporary standstill, and I'm trying to get rid of that. Yeah, I've sort of taken an odd detour the past few years, but it hasn't been pointless - I've lived in another country, been in a relationship that though it ended also held a lot of good, made loads of awesome friends, become active in the Jewish community, figured out what exactly I wanted to do with my PhD, and gotten a MA in History thanks to my awesome adviser. Now I'm off to do a PhD in a country that I like, in a town that I know, in a subject that I truly love. Of course there are unknown factors, but it could, all in all, be a lot worse. I need to remember that. And I also need to stop mentally planning years ahead, because you just can't do that. And I need to stop comparing myself to others and imagine everyone has their shit together and I don't, because it's inaccurate.

Anyway, today I reviewed eight chapters of Hebrew vocabulary and grammar and got started on the ninth - prepositions, which is hellish - and ran almost 2 miles. I'm trying to build up my running, but it's really hard around here because there's so many random hills and it's exhausting running more than twenty minutes. I'll get there, though. Today I totally ran up our street alongside my grandma on her bike. Ha.

Well, see you later!