Considering the fact that it has been almost six months since my last post, is it any wonder that no one keeps up with my blog on a regular basis?
Well that is about to change BIG TIME in the coming weeks, since there are a number of exciting developments in my life on both a personal and professional level that I think bear mentioning....
Michael and I just got back from a two week trip to England and Ireland with his son Jarred, and Jarred's girlfriend, Evan. They are both about to graduate from college, and this seemed like a great opportunity to get to know them better has they head off into the world.
We flew to London on May 3, and spent three whirlwind days taking in the sites, and having dinner with a dear friend from college, before renting a car in central London and negotiating our way through miles and miles of roundabouts and street name changes, getting lost on the M50 a few times, and taking an emergency exit past police officers posted at an old bridge to keep idiots like us from using it to cross to the other side of the freeway, before heading off to Stonehenge, Bath and Liverpool.
We flew from Liverpool to Dublin where we checked into a hotel, and Jarred and Evan checked into a youth hostel, so we could each experience Dublin in our own way. Michael and I were given tickets to a rugby match our first night in Dublin, and had a blast watching the game even though neither one of us really understood what was going on. I get that its about making goals, but the way they go about making goals wasn't something I had ever experienced before; the scrimmage line looks like a wrestling match, and the toss looks like a basketball game crossed with a cheerleading squad.
In any event, we covered every inch of Dublin over the next four days, from evensong at Christ Church Cathedral, to a sing along at the oldest pub in Ireland, to the Chester Beatty Library (which houses an amazing antiquarian book collection, and includes several original letters from Paul to the Corinthians). In my opinion, it beat the Book of Kells by a mile, although the Long Hall at the Trinity College Library, which houses the Book of Kells, is still my idea of heaven. Well, that or the library at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville.
The Irish countryside is as beautiful as everyone told us it would be, and we all fell madly in love with the Dingle Peninsula. Michael wants to go back next summer for a month, which would be fantastic if we could swing it.
I think the most compelling part of the trip however, was that it inspired something in my soul that I thought I had lost, or at the very least, put on a dust covered shelf at the back of the closet, over the past few years. I have been struggling for years to find a balance between the relentlessly driven business person, the artist, and the flawed but hopeful human being I am, and it seems this trip and some of the experiences and conversations I had along the way reminded me that the twenty year old who thought she could conqure the world by the time she was thirty, is still IN there....I am bursting with ideas and creativity and I KNOW how to make the things happen that I want to happen, and I know how to get where I want to be, and the funny thing is, since I stopped watching the news, or reading the newspaper, I stopped feeling like the sky is falling and life is beautiful..."even the orchestra, is beautiful"...
Case in point???? The swine flu "pandemic" that turned out to be nothing more than talking heads trying to terrify the nation. When I stopped watching the news, the world stopped falling apart. That may sound wildly naive, but at the same time, it has been incredibly inspiring. The world goes on with or without our hopes and dreams and fears, and I learned THAT as well when I was in Europe. Things last, but people don't, so why spend time wringing my hands over what COULD happen, what COULD go wrong, what IS wrong, when I can celebrate each day as the "best day of my life"...because, honestly.... it IS the only day I have....it is the only day ANY of us have.....
So I am off to make the most of it....
With many more posts to follow....
