Twenty...something. (Part 2)

You may have seen this before, but life is beautiful.

Fall in the DC area has seemed especially beautiful to me this year. I guess it's because I haven't spent one here for 5 years. Fall was beautiful in Ohio, too, and I think it was in Omaha but I can't remember - it was such a busy, emotional, intense people-filled time. (I know that football happened.)

This fall, I've had the privilege to go for walks and runs in many different parts of the area - on the trails I grew up on, in the farmers' markets of Kensington and Silver Spring, Columbia Heights and Dupont Circle, the neighborhood. I wonder if I've been thinking about the beauty because, for the first time in a long time, I've had time and space to think. Sure, underemployment has been in the back of my mind since August, but recently I've thought more about enjoying the space it's giving me.

And, wonderfully weirdly and unexpectedly, the opportunities. I've gotten to interview everywhere from right on U Street, to Hyattsville, to Rockville, to the freakin' Audubon Naturalist Society in good ol' Chevy Chase right off of Jones Mill Road that I went to in elementary school. Every interview opportunity, I've recently realized, has given me the opportunity to get to know my home all over again. And begin to think about calling it home in a new way, as an Anna with some new experience under the belt that I wear almost every day.

This has been my twenty something so far. Leave high school saying goodbye to wonderful friends, and go to college, and go to El Salvador, and go to Spain, and live in a brand-new U.S. city for a year and see more of the country, and make a ton of wonderful friends of all ages and walks of life, and then come home with all those new experiences and friends in my life AND get to re-connect with home, and old friends again. Discover and learn about the world and myself along the way, and the whole time, particularly when the going gets tough, try my hardest to remember that I have an incredibly wonderful, interesting, dynamic, supportive family. Especially the immediate ones. Mom, Dad and Daniel, I love you so much.

I am the luckiest lady I know.

So. Now what? What am I gonna do now that I think I want to be here for at least another year and a half?

For a little while longer, I gotta keep writing cover letters. Keep working part-time in the office at Saint Luke. Thanksgiving came early for me this year, when I realized just how fortunate I am to have a good job this fall - it may be the not very mentally stimulating tasks of opening doors, stapling bulletins, and stuffing envelopes, but I get to work in a comfortable environment and I also get to work in a food pantry.

Keep counting my blessings. I am especially grateful this time for the ones that currently live within a 10 mile radius.

And, as Jamie Cullum sings, "I'm a twenty something and I'll keep being me."

That is so wonderful. And beautiful.