The uneasy part of living the dream

I know how lucky I am: for the simple basic facts of my existence and place on this planet, as well as for what's happening now. I've had plenty of people tell me how jealous they are of me, because I get to live rent-free in London and work in a job directly related to my career plan and do exotic things like jet off to the Continent for the weekend. In many ways, I am "living the dream" - at least my dream, at least for right now.

I acknowledge this, I accept this, I am grateful for it. But sometimes I feel like crap, and I can't pretend that everything is sunshine and butterflies (not the least because I do in fact live in a city where it rains almost every day).

I want so much to be able to just put up pictures of pretty things I see on my travels, gabbing about funny cultural misunderstandings I had, or concluding that while I had a pretty rough time at X thing I learned and grew from it! But you know what? Sometimes, I just want to whine. I feel like my friend Amanda said it best when she told me, after I apologized for complaining, "Pretending to love everything about a situation you are in because you feel you NEED to be positive only makes things worse." She's a homeowner, so you know she's wise.

It's now October 21. I've been here for two months and one week, and have about a month and a half left in my job. I could go into a huge rant here about any number of things that are irritating me about my life.

But you know what? I've done that already. I'm sick of complaining. I've literally complained about the same things so many times that I copied and pasted what I had written to one friend in another email.

Last week, when I was wallowing in my life, I pulled up my friend Laura Maas' blog. I've already talked about how much I adore her, but I think I fell for her even more (in a platonic way... maybe.) when I read her latest blog post. She wrote about how she had felt off since arriving in a new city, but had been afraid of being frank with others. Her moral was that she realized, as her title indicates, "It take a village to raise a Maasy," and that utilizing the support of her friends makes her stronger.

Basically I'm just going to plagiarize from her because I love that. Being vulnerable is hard, but it's better than smiling through gritted teeth or tears.

Yes, I already used this photo in my blog, but we're JUST
SO ADORABLE!

... I guess this did end up being a post where something was difficult but I learned and grew from it. Sorry for being a tricksy hobbit.

(P.S. Reason #4758 I adore Laura Maas - she sent me an out-of-the-blue email the next day and ended with "When you read my most recent post, you hold a sizable plot of land in my village. ...Yeah... that came out sounding dirtier than I intended.")

Someone who is ACTUALLY living the dream