August 15, 2023 

I am stealing a few precious moments before going to bed for myself, after working pretty much all day (I just got back from “meet the new students night”). 

I just picked up Eliza Croft’s book “Girls who Travel Solo.” As soon as I started reading the book, my thoughts about work faded away.

That says a lot, for it being prep week. Monday is go time, and there is a whole lot of work to do, and a lot on my mind. It would be easy to feel anxious, and to spend all day, every day this week, just doing work stuff/ preparing. I know that, for a teacher, being prepared well for those first days of school is essential for the whole year to go well.

But I also learned that a work life balance is non-negotiable, last semester when my heart and emotional well-being were so torn up. The fact that I have to have time for me, and I have to have a life outside of work, felt like such an important revelation that I am promising myself that I will never go back. I will not be perfect, but I am determined to do better at having a work-life balance. 

Eliza, the author of this book, is writing about how she wanted so badly to adventure and have experiences that were outside of the ordinary. She was dating someone who valued and needed stability and the comfort of what is known. After four years of dating him, she ended up breaking up with him, and then healing her broken heart on Bali. 

My heart is much, much more healed than it was a month ago, and I have come so, so far from the emotional state I was in when I broke up with my boyfriend exactly seven months ago today. But there is something inside of me that is restless now. There is something that is not content with the life that I have. I feel restless knowing that my ex boyfriend is only a few miles away, and that I cannot talk to him or have the same companionship or connection that we used to have – even when we were still in the more friends stage of our relationship. I miss that. There’s that hole that shows up as restlessness and discontentment. 

Eliza’s words from the introduction of her book resonated with me “I remember a time when my ex-boyfriend showed me a photo of a house he’d been looking at. He wanted us to move in together. The expression on my face was a picture, to say the last. The jphoto gave me nightmares. It also gave me a huge realisation that settling down was 110% not what I wanted for probably the next ten years of my life. Buying a house was hardly one of my main needs. I wanted to explore the world and build up some unforgettable experiences.”  

I did want and hope for the hypothetical house – I did want to stay with my ex boyfriend and see where that adventure would have lead. It lead to a dead end, a broken heart, and a sense of loss and restlessness. 

I think I mentioned earlier that James would not have been able to travel. He was too much in debt due to college and his car, and he was focused on and excited about advancing in his career. 

That road lead to a dead end, but I feel the potential for a different road to open wide. I feel the feeling of “I have to do this.” It feels like it will never happen, and I feel almost frantic for it too. 

Although there is a part of me, even now, that does not want to walk away from the place where James is at. Even though we have no relationship now. But leaving this city feels like the final nail in the coffin that is our relationship. 

I and my coworkers went to Pasta Express today. They love Pasta Express. We have gone there multiple times in the three years I have worked with them. 

Somehow I’ve never noticed (or forgotten) the two giant screens in the restaurant that display gorgeous footage of Italy. The landscapes on the screen had almost a mesmerizing element to them. Had those screens always been there? I had no idea. But as a sat watching drone footage of the colosseum and cities on hills next to sparkling ocean waters, something inside me was pulled toward the places in those videos, and a life that is very different from my current one. I had the thought that, one year from now, I could be wandering through those very towns. I could be starting up at the colosseum. 

There is so much to do. Renew my passport. Learn how to travel alone. Figure out where I would go. Go to a self defense class so I feel less like a sitting duck as a woman alone. Keep up with school and my students in the meantime. Get up the guts to actually quit my job, and leave this city and this country that is my home. 

I just looked up the passport renewal process. Seems less complicated than I thought. 

I think I might actually be able to do this.