I keep thinking about traveling as my mood brightens. I think about all the things I'd like to see and do as I let go of all my negativity and obsessions. I think they were a kind of smoke screen, anyway, an excuse to hide my own insecurities and fears. An excuse not to live my own life. I mean, yes, I care deeply, I have strong convictions, and so forth, but that isn't really a reason not to live my own life. I'm letting all that go. I can't save the world. I don't intend to try. I just want to live my own life now, to be happy, and to recognize and appreciate my own limited purview. I want to appreciate what I do have, and can do, and savor every drop that's left to me, if that makes sense.

Even if it doesn't, I know in my own mind what I want now. :) And I'm going after it. I'm making the most of all that's left to me.

I keep thinking of sunny places, places that have always ignited my curiosity, instead of the ones I've imagined as being closer to the "ideal." I don't really believe the ideal is realizable under current conditions, anyway, and the necessary and sufficient conditions may not be achievable themselves. Anyway, I'm wondering about ways that I can actually visit these places.

The money part makes me nervous. And I wonder if dreaming about these things is a good and necessary step in the right direction which I'm confusing by being too pragmatic again. Maybe it isn't about planning everything out and making sure it's achievable but just about the lift that dreaming and hope give me. About the doors being opened because I'm opening to what's behind them.

There are all kinds of options: grad school abroad, a semester abroad, teaching English abroad. But there's no need to jump the gun, overload myself with information just as the dream is blooming and end up frightened or overwhelmed, only to conclude that it's either impossible or too risky or too hard or something. For now, I think I'm just going to let it bloom, and see what comes of it. :)