The beginning of a new chapter

How should I start this? Well, I've been thinking and analyzing a lot lately and I feel a new chapter of my life is starting. And, due to the fact that a lot of people asked me to start writing again, I decided that writing will be part of this new chapter.

I will not over-analyze and talk to you only about the new chapter that is about to begin. But I would like to say I had an AMAZING 2011 :) I cannot believe I did all of that :) I was in Dominican Republic, I was leading an organization, I went to an International Conference in Mexico (!!!), I visited Dominican Republic, I fell in love, I celebrated my birthday in a crazy way (and very far away from home), I visited Germany, I lost my friends and then they got me back, I went home for 2 months and I re-connected with my parents, I visited Romania (unexplored "parts"), I was chair for a local conference for AIESEC Bucharest (great way to re-connect with my home LC), I got an internship in Western Europe, I moved to another country, I've got my own place, I celebrated 5 years of being an AIESECer... and the year did not finish yet. WOW!!!

Looking back at my resolutions for 2011:
- "exchange - I'm going to work in a company in western Europe and I will start the slow transition between the organization that gave me the best 4 years of my life to corporate life" DONE
- "This year I'm going to read at least that 52 books (at least one per week)" DONE
- "This year I'm going to take my parents to Rome by plane and we are going to visit the city for at least 4 days (on my own expense)" DONE (I did not take them to Rome for 4 days, but to Brussels for 7 days, so I think it compensates)

I managed to do all of them! WOW!!!

I am very proud of my 2011 and I realize it will be very difficult to make 2012 better :) I already have a couple of resolutions in my mind for 2012, but they are not decided upon yet. I will come back with news about this.

Until then, getting back to the reason of my post today, I feel that a new chapter is about to begin. You know how sometimes, before the storm comes, you can smell the rain? Or how sometimes before a storm hits, everything gets calm? I have no idea what comes now (if it's a storm or not), but something new is about to start. And I'm getting excited... actually, I already started to make some changes in my life... :)

I case I'm not writing before 31st of December, I will wish you a Happy New Year and a FANTASTIC 2012! Kisses!

Finding home

I took me a while to listen to some of my friends and keep writing on my blog, even if I'm home. I decided I should continue writing because I want to share the cultural shocks you have when you come home, because the journey does not end when you finish the experience, but it continues with all the consequences of your journey.

I came home almost 2 months ago and I have to admit I wanted to come home. I missed my country, my parents, my friends, my food, places etc. But when you come home and you stay (meaning you don't come just for 2 weeks, on a holiday), the situation is different.

I was talking the other day with some friends (which I have to admit I did not know they liked me that much) about how I truly feel since I came back. And I think the situation might be a little different because I was so far away from home and staying in touch with friends, family etc was more difficult (7 hours difference, jobs, responsibilities etc). I do not think it's the same for everybody, but I have to say I found more people in the same situation as mine.

I doesn't matter the country or the experience - you feel the change in you, you realize you changed some characteristics in you, you know you are more patient, energetic or whatever. But you have to catch up with the life you left behind. Everything is changed after one year, people have jobs, changed jobs, have boyfriends/girlfriends, someone hates someone etc, and you don't understand anything. You might say the wrong thing/joke, you might not understand a joke or you might feel left out because you don't understand the meaning of the discussions around you. And you ask for explanations, support or information.

Some of the people around you might understand and accept the fact that you are changed and they are changed; they might understand that people evolved during the past year and you (both parties involved in that "relationship") cannot take it from where you left it, but you have to make some adjustments. Some people will accept everything and start working with the new situation. Other people might not understand the changes, might not understand your frustrations and they might not want to see you anymore, ever again. And this is the painful part - accepting that life moves on and friends you thought you have are not there anymore.

I was surprised from both sides - discovering friends I never knew I have and discovering I lost others. And this truly is a painful moment - this situation can put you down and you might feel disoriented and left out (I have met people that found themselves in this situation as well, even after one year since their return).

It is a true joy and pleasure finding the country and it's characteristics. My luck was that I was for 1 year living in a country with a little worse situation than Romania - so I can say that I feel Romania has improved and it is a lot better than some places in the world. I rediscovered the food, the movies, the buses, the metro, the bars, the coffee, the smoking people (we are a smoking country) etc. And I find it all superb, because I truly feel I'm home.

This is a hard moment for everybody (when they come home, after a long period) and I know persons that even after one year still feel they don't fit anymore. This is the moment when some of us are pushed to leave again, thinking they are going back to what they had before or to a new place. Or this is the moment when some of us manage to get back in their "circles" and they will feel they can actually make the change they wanted to make, in Romania, with the help of their foreign "knowledge" and experience. Personally, I think that if Romanians would put a little more effort in the reintegration activities for Romanians that come home, our country's situation would be a little bit better.

Coming back to the original thought - to go back, I might not find what I left, because things changed there already also; to stay here, I still don't feel reintegrated enough. So I think my future is officially undecided; how I once wrote in AIESEC Bucharest: my future is a open sea of opportunities.

Future

We live in a modern world, a world which is supposed to have cures and ways of getting out of problems, defining what you want, helping you to discover yourself in time, helping you to develop yourself professionally... but in the same time, we ended up in a world where we feel a lot more lost than found.

Lately I've been trying to force myself into thinking and analyzing, reading and comprehending what is happening to me, the process I'm going through, what am I thinking, what do I want to do etc. Sometimes I think it's weird to do so. I was lucky enough, so far, that opportunities came and I took them exactly when it was supposed to happen. Or that was my impression, at least. Sometimes I think it's ironical... why to force myself to think and analyze in order to discover? Why are we living in this modern world which supposedly has the answers to all the questions minus the most important ones... Do I really have to close myself in a box and think? Or do things appear and we just use them?

Sometimes we feel lost, we feel alone, sad or unappreciated. And we seek for help in this world, thinking that a modern world, the world we see on TV or in papers, should be able to help us. But we end up on medication or talking with doctors about what is happening... isn't that taking our freedom away from us? We hear everyday that smoking kills. The best story I heard about it was how our body rejects at the beginning the smoke, because our body was created and developed throughout thousands of years to protect itself again the bad things... So why end up on medication to treat something? Isn't it supposed for our body to cure itself? How were people 2000 years ago use to get away from sad stuff? I'm sure they were upset because they did not hunt enough animals to support "financially" their families :)

We hear everyday that we are allowed to dream if we want to innovate, we should dare to build our future, but how are we suppose to do that when we hear someone telling us that we lost self respect, we need pills to survive (what is doing that to your self esteem?) or that we need to start thinking about our future. How to you think about your future? You sit at a table, by yourself, with pen and paper in hand and you start asking questions about what you want? You go to a shrink which is going to talk with you (actually ask you questions) until you discover what you want? But isn't that a waste of time? Maybe my future is passing me by while I'm talking with my shrink about it...

There are moments when we have to take decisions about our future, but sometimes we end up being so lost or tired, that we cannot decide so easily about it... maybe we ended up in the wrong future, because this modern world does not provide all the time what it promises...

Roles - given or assumed?

Since last Thursday I've been analyzing people and situations around me. And it made me think about the roles we have - we assume them or are they given to us?

I will give an example (no names, no details), not because I have something specific with this case, but because from that situation I started to ask myself that question. I had the chance of observing for a very short period of time a family relation (parents included). Sometimes it takes for an outsider to see better the roles each person has in an known environment. Or sometimes it takes a longer period of time away from that known environment to be able to see the roles with your own eyes. I could see better the roles in my family after 6 months, when I went in December back home; even though, honestly, nobody wanted to accept that the situation was actually how I described it - maybe it was too painful.

Coming back to my example, the guy's role was pretty much defined: person unfitted to take care of anything or take a decision, but who can do all the work they tell him to do. He could not back the car without someone mentioning to pay attention to the motorcycles; but when delivery gets to the house, he needs to go and pay them, even though the money were already on the table and someone was at the door. And perhaps all of this because of a mistake he did in his past.

But this situation took me back to my past. I remembered, from my short childhood, my aunt's (from my dad) situation. She got married with the wrong person and after a short period she had to divorce; she had to come back home to her parents, with her tail between her legs, admit she did a mistake and ask her parents to let her move back home. Imagine what she had to go through...it's not an easy situation, but everyone can be mistaken; her family gave her automatically the role of a "failure in life"; you went out there, you tried and you failed. You came home, no money, no dream, no boy, no kid, no nothing and we have to support you. But she just came home to her safe environment, not to ask for pity, but to ask for comfort and support in order to gain back the trust in herself and to go back in the world.

One thing led to another and it made me ask: the roles we have, do we assume them or they are given to us? In my example, maybe he assumed that role since he was a kid, long time before he ever explored the world by himself and "perform" "that" mistake. With my aunt, maybe she was never paying enough attention to analyzing people and promises, maybe she was always a person that believed everything that everybody said. Or maybe people around gave them those roles, sometimes based on suppositions, sometimes because of their own fears or just because of their own perceptions about the world.

But how are we suppose to escape those roles, if people that we trust do not help us? Can you imagine how difficult it must be for someone to come and ask for comfort and support, to regain strength to go back in the world, and to be hit by an attitude of "actually, we were expecting that from you".

Personal example: my parents always believed I'm a "in the air" person. This is why they were extremely scared when I got my driver's license; they were always sure I will get in car accidents. It's true I got involved in a very serious one, but it was not my fault (the guy ran a red light). But will I ever escape that role or I'm starting to assume it? Because I strongly believe in that idea: you can be brainwashed - if someone tells you everyday that you are dumb, sooner or later you will start believing it. (if you are interested in this topic, please read "Blink - the power of thinking without thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell)

And I'm part of an organization which is suppose to help young persons develop so much that they will overcome everything :) and they are suppose to start with personal change. We want to engage every young person in the world until 2015; and it's possible. But how can I finish what I have started if I'm leaving in 5 weeks? And yes, I know, when it comes to professional I need to let future leaders to continue what I have started, but what happens with personal changes/help/relations?

In the end, I still ask myself: the roles we have, do we assume them or are they given to us? Are they given and then they become a part of us (we assume them) or we assumed them so so good, that everybody has the impression they were there for ever?

Signs

Sometimes I chose to believe in signs. Lately I thought I saw too many signs... it's like the universe or something/someone is trying to send me a message.

I don't remember when it concretely started, but I remember that lately some of the things I wish came true and/or things felt into place (like everything that really has to happen is happening). Stupid example: I truly wished to eat sushi, and today I finally had the opportunity; but not normal opportunity, I ate for free :) a member from AIESEC had a coupon and invited us :)

Lately I got so scared of different thoughts that I had and I wanted to badly some support, but deep down inside of me I knew it's probably going to be a lonely road again. But every time I wrote on my blog, people wrote me back e-mails saying that they understand me, that I'm not alone etc... people I did not even know they are reading my blog; and they said all the right things :)

Today I was searching so bad for some answers to a specific question I had in mind for a while... Today was special because of its date and what it meant for me 7th of the month. And I was reading, watching movies and thinking... and all of a sudden a lost buddy, which I met through my friend (who's birthday was on the 3rd), wrote me on Yahoo Messenger. Let me explain the weird part of it. In Romania we use a lot Yahoo Messenger to communicate, but in Dominican Republic they are more focused on Gtalk or Hotmail, so lately (the past 6 months) I barely used Yahoo. But for the past days, I started again to log in, even though nobody was talking with me through it. But today this buddy clicked the wrong window and wrote me "is worth it"... like someone/something was trying to send a message... (or maybe I should interpret it as a mistake, because the message was not for me in the first place)

Or tonight, before I went out, I was thinking that I really need to start living my life fully... now that I have 7 more weeks in Dominican Republic, now that I'm starting a new chapter, now that I'm preparing for something different... and when I arrived home, in the car, I felt in love with a new song and I guessed instantaneously who sings it and I also discovered 5 minutes later, in from of my laptop, that the name of the song is "good life"...

The last thing that happened to me before I went to bed was an e-mail I received. Actually a picture. The picture itself upset me and made me jealous and questioning stuff. But the e-mail... I got home and I wished so bad for an e-mail; I checked my inbox and there was no e-mail I had wished for. But after I discovered the new song I felt in love with, I got the e-mail I wished for. I don't know if I should accept the sign as it (received what I wanted - be careful what you wish for) or if I should interpret it as a sign showing something else (the content of the picture).

Why do I see so many signs around me? Or maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me and I see only what I wanna see... crazy to believe in signs? and how to interpret them? :)

Change

Did it ever happen to you a change to be so big or so important that you can smell it? This is how I've been feeling for the past 2 weeks; I'm so aware of the transformation that I can smell the change...

When I left the country I was so aware of the reasons of my trip and I wanted so bad to achieve my objectives, but I never knew exactly how. When I went home in December I was actually a little bit scared that I will not achieve my personal goals... But the events from the past 2 months forced me, more or less, to start thinking about some things and analyze a lot more other things. Now I know I have to take some decisions and I will start analyzing, so I can be sure I will take good decisions.

I feel that the transformation that will come it's so important or big that sometimes I get a little bit scared. I have this internal fight: do I wanna change, do I wanna think and talk about it, do I wanna pretend everything is the same, do I wanna settle, what do I want to do? And without even talking with me, decisions slowly come alone...which is weird, but this is how I feel. I scares me like wow, but change is not always bad so I don't need to be scared... the only thing I feel that I have to do (unfortunately) is to be selfish... in order to make sure I achieve what is good for me...

I don't know what is the end, I don't see the light from the end of the tunnel, but I know decisions are starting to be taken; so far, I have 2 clear actions that I have to do when I go home, to close some "businesses"... Today I wrote 2 applications for my internship, but I did not have yet the courage to send them - they say when it has to happen it will happen. I'm also reading about religions, I'm reading books in Spanish and American literature like a crazy person (finally I'm reading 3 books in the same time, like I did home). And I also discovered what will be my personal birthday present: a new battery for my laptop (again weird gift for a girl at my age :P ). Maybe I wanna go to Australia or Canada (or very far away) for one more year, to discover something else...but I always needed something sure to rely on and I'm scared like a crazy person... I'm always making people around me sure of things, comforting them, but I can never do it for myself. Or maybe I wanna live in a small room in a new city and discover... but not everything depends on me...

Funny part is my behavior from the past month...I've been changing internally so much and so many people tell me that I behave differently or that I'm really changing; people that see me everyday, not people from home. Maybe it's true, maybe I'm changing already... but then: why am I so scared of this, even if I know change is not all the time bad? What I know for sure is that my new dream is taking shape: I established the country of my internship, when I wanna go, what I'm going to do with some things from my past - how to solve them, and how I feel about 10 specific people in my life; but I need to draw a better picture, I need a little bit more time... but I can smell the change already...

35 days and 5 events

Some time ago, a period of 35 days started... in that/this period I had/have to go through 5 different events, important events for me, events that I had/have to celebrate 10.000 km away from home, my family, my dear ones, my friends... I wanted to share them...

First event: Happy birthday, mom! (16th of April)
The most important person in my life is my mom; she was there for me in so many moments and so any events, that I cannot describe. What we went through, only close close friends know. And my mom :) Anyway, it was a huge blow for me not to be there for her birthday. I thought it nothing important and I will manage it, but I could not even talk with her on Skype, because I was bursting into tears. I love you, mom! Happy birthday and I wish you the most important things (from my point of view): be happy and stay healthy. I love you! Happy birthday! La multi multi multi ani fericiti si sanatosi!

Second event: Happy birthday. Denisa! (19th of April)
Another birthday I missed. Again, I thought everything will be ok, but as I realized I was away from my best friends for more than 9 months and I missed too many events. I'm so scared I lost the connection with them, especially my best friends (5 to count), and I will not be able to get it back. Denisa it's too special for me...I cannot find all the words to describe her and why she is so special for me: from her personality, her support, her help, her mind, how bright she is, how she is thinking and taking decisions until...all the small (but very important) details that describe her. I hope from the bottom of the heart we will always have our friendship and everything will come true for you (all your dreams and desires)...including our Brussels dream :) Happy birthday and be happy!

Third event: Happy Easter! (24rd of April)
Easter is the most important holiday in my religion. I'm not a very religious person, but being in another country with another religion so far away from home, during this holiday made me realize that it is an important holiday for me personally. I used to fight with me mom every year that I want to cook some special meals (cozonaci, drob) alone and that I want to learn and be good at it :) Or how we used to cook too much for 3 persons (how big is my family) and how we felt after the 3 days of holiday (full and stuffed with too much food). Or how I used to go to the church and get the light for the following year...light that I did not bring to my soul and home this year :( But most of all I missed my family and my friends and spending time with them. I think it's important to be with your dear ones during the holidays.

Fourth event: rest in peace my dear friend (I will always celebrate your birthday because I'm thankful I had you in my life) (3rd of May)
My friend that I already mentioned in this blog and that is not with us anymore, would have celebrated his birthday... But in my religion and culture, when the person is not with us anymore, we say "Rest in peace" and we hope that person found peace. Besides that, instead of being sad and crying about it, this year I decided to celebrate the day by remembering all the good moments and why I'm so thankful he was (shortly) part of my life. I think he would be more happy if we would remember the good moments and not the bad ones, or the fact that he is not here anymore. I'm not saying I'm better, because it still hurts like hell when I realize I will never see him, hear him, talk with him etc...but I need to see the reason for his "participation" in my/our life. I learned a lot and I discovered a lot more...thank you for that! Thank you!

Fifth event: my birthday...
I thought I don't want to celebrate it due to the memory of my friend, I thought it will hurt not to spend it with my family and friends from home, I thought I feel I'm getting too old and I'm not settled... but I don't know what I want/feel anymore about it. I know I will never celebrate here like I do it at home, because nobody knows how we celebrate birthdays in Romania... (and believe me, it is different), but maybe it's time for a change... Maybe I don't need to settle yet, I can still act like a wild horse :) (you need to read my previous blog to understand this joke), maybe I can enjoy with new friends, maybe everything is going to be ok...

I thought a lot about how these 5 events in such a short period are going to affect me, but as someone very important told me once, it's not important to be there one day of the year, but it's important to be there everyday of every year... only that I was away for a year :) They affected me by making me realize that I have to think and reflect who am I now...who is the new me if there is someone new :)

The secret... you...

When you go away for a long period of time, one of the most wonderful processes is taking place. Some secret ingredients are: to be far away from home, almost no option of going home, talking even with very close friends only once per month.

When everything I mentioned and a lot more happens, you discover yourself, your true self. But a small details: most probably, all the people around you will not discover that (depends on each person, but you got the idea). When you go far away from home, for at least one year, you will automatically put yourself in a bubble, trying to protect yourself or to enjoy as much as possible without judging anything and anybody. From my point of view, that is the moment when you are making it very difficult, for people around you, to get to the core you and discover your true self - they need to break that bubble in order to find you.

I thought about this in the last week, mostly because of a lot of things that are happening in my personal life, things that forced me to think about what I want to do, who I am and why I want to do all the things I wanna do. Meanwhile I was talking with very close friends from home about our plans for the future year and I realized that I really need to start thinking a little bit more about what I want to do. And while talking with my friends I discovered that you might present a person to the people around you, but the circumstances of being so far away from home, from your friends, from everything that defined you for more than 20 years, are presenting you as a different person. Even if you don't want to do it, the circumstances are not helping you to do it differently: you many things that define you might not be close to you.

You might lack the support, your friends, the money, the power, the knowledge, the familiarity, the places, the music, the food, the coffee, the cars... or you might just lack the moments that are bringing the true you to the surface. And then I had another AHA moment. This is the perfect situation to meet people exactly the same as you...that are acting the same as you are acting home.

No, I did not meet anybody like me here yet. I had the opportunity to meet that person at home, in my safe environment; here I had the opportunity to meet people that have the same behavior that I have at home, when people do not know me. That's the difference: at home when I met that person I managed (I hope) to spend enough time in order to "break" that person and manage to see the true self; here I see the behavior of a person acting when the other person does not know the core self and when they think they can act however, because the other person cannot read them completely.

Back home the circumstances are helping me to be myself, are helping me to not not to fake, but to do/be/act exactly how I am. I used to talk with my girls about guys coming with different cars to pick us up from home, just trying to impress us; but we were doing the same: going to clubs with different cars, just to show off. That's childish, but it happens. Or how some of us are attracted by foreigners, just to talk a little bit more English or to see how a different culture thinks. But being home, in your self environment, with all the right circumstances, make you act in specific ways, ways that you would not choose as a way to express yourself when you are away from home. Because you don't have everything you have home to rely on; sometimes you know so clear that home you would react differently, but away from home you simply... cannot...

That brings me in front of a very important question for me: if you need all of those things to be able to express your true self, then how do you know everybody is true? How do you know you do not take a wrong/good decision based on circumstances which would forces you, that in a safe and know environment, to act different? I'm not lying, but I know that in some situations I might have acted differently if I would have been at home... so, am I true or am I lying, just because I don't have the right circumstances? Personally I think it's ME all the time, but sometimes I wish some people could see me at home...

PS: this is for a crazy girl willing to pursue a crazy dream with me, which is reality for us already... this is for discovering a new country, a new culture, a new experience, this is for discovering the true us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwsSNrSEONc

Impact

During the last week I started to think very much about the impact I have on people around me. A few weeks ago and last night I did something which reminded me even more of one of my good friends that is not here with us anymore.

A few weeks ago I started to talk with a person using a random question, a random thing that lead to something I had never have in my mind. This relation (not relationship :P ) is reminding me so much of my friend, is reminding me so much of the freedom of speech and the trust we build between us without even knowing why. But one thing that I learned from that situation 3 years ago is that you need to be open minded enough to accept that sometimes you just find someone around you that you have an automatic connection with. But I will never forget how that conversation at 4 a.m., 3 years ago, lead to a beautiful friendship, lead to something which I still have deep in my heart.

Last night I did something I have done in cold day in the winter of 2008. Because in that cold morning I have forced him to think and talk about feelings buried deep in his soul. Doing that in that moment, so not selfish, so honest made me earn a friend that has been close to me for the next 3 years.

I started to think today about this because I find it interesting: you can start a relation, a connection in a random way, but the end it's not that random. Being here, so far way from home, I was "obliged" to appreciate a lot more people around me, friends, family, feelings etc. And now I start realizing that I did something which is not me: I started a conversation with an unknown person, I was not shy how I am in these types of situations, something pushed me to be... courageous and that thing (which I cannot explain) got me to a totally unexpected situation. Something pushed me to find out more about this person and I find the situation extremely... weird, but good weird.

Sometimes we build walls around us, sometimes we get hurt and scared and we close ourselves from any contact with the exterior, sometimes we run halfway around the world, hoping it will do good to us, hoping we will never get hurt again, hoping we end up in a place where people don't know us and don't criticize. We reach a level of self protection that high that it's almost impossible for other people to get to us, in any way. The experiences I was talking before made me wanting to tear those walls down, to be opened even if I might get hurt, to stop running around the world, because I might miss something great, something great which is right in front of my eyes.

I don't know what made me to stop being shy and ask that question, but something tells me I did a good thing.

PS: going to Mexico to the international conference showed me pretty much the same thing: I met people there, with some of them I'm still talking, but even if I'm not talking with them right now (on a daily basis), something changed in us because of our interaction in that conference.

We always have an impact on people around us. It's just up to us to decide what kind of impact we want to have. And it's up to us to choose if we let people around us to have an impact on us.

Achieving dreams

Why when you achieve a dream you feel exhausted?

Actually lately I thought very much about one single question: in life, you do what you should do or what you want to do? I love asking this question to my members all the time, it tells me something about them and their way of life. But in the same time it made me think about other points of view on the same question. Maybe sometimes doing what you should so, will bring you to do the things you want to do.

Every since I joined AIESEC I wanted so badly to be present in an important moment in this organization. I was so jealous on members present in the organization in 2005, because they had the opportunity to create something which became history later. I wished the same for me. But I realized it's almost impossible, because the new vision is going to be create in 3 years from when I joined and I knew you need more time to be that important for the organization. But one way or another, I did it. I was part of the creation of 2015 vision, I added my personal touch to a vision for a huge, impressive organization and for their next generations.

But when I realized I was part of it and that I achieved a bold dream that I thought it was impossible, I realized I was exhausted. I'm not saying it in a bad way, but I think at one point in my beautiful journey in this wonderful organization I got a little bit lost. It's everything so pretty, so many nice people, so diverse, so crazy, so wild, so professional, so everything, that you risk at one point to stop seeing the big picture and to lose the sense of doing it: influencing people's life and making an impact in the society around it.

When I apply the same question in personal life, the feeling is much more intense. I know when something or someone is important for me when specific things happen, like: I wake up after minimum 6 hours with the same idea in my mind; it burns in the middle of my cheat when I talk about it, my mind accelerates when I think about it, my heart beats faster when I see something that reminds me of it etc. But the feeling is the same (just a little bit more intense): I feel exhausted when I achieve it.

My dreams are starting to get achieved; at least, the ones I had for this age. But I cannot help wondering if the older I will get the more exhausted I will feel when I will achieve my dreams? And now, why do I feel exhausted when I achieve dreams? And...can I have answers to all my questions? :)

New year, new beginnings...

Going home for Christmas holidays was a very interesting experience for me. Not seeing my friends or spending time with my family, but because I felt I need to make some changes in my life, to make some resolutions for 2011, to say goodbye to some things from 2010 or to some friends.

Home found me being weird, feeling a lot of things and being confused about even more. But being home calmed me down, offered me the possibility of thinking very clear at my past, my present and my future. And I was so happy when the time spent alone or with old friends around me started to produce results and decisions. Now, I don't want to live anymore in the past or feeling sorry for some things; I want to live the present and prepare slowly for my future. I felt the urge to write ever since I arrived back in Dominican Republic, but lack of time did not allow me. But I want to write again, to be written black on white written my thoughts, my feelings, my ideas and never to forget them.

This life took me through weird and unexpected moments, from those that proved me that I am a strong person and that I know when to stop from things that hurt me, until things that I had never even dreamed about. I don't know why, but for more than a month I feel very confident and free and capable of doing a lot of things. And I'm really pushing myself to do only things that are good for me and to stop doing things that I'm addicted to, just because they taste good for one moment.

This year I'm going to go in exchange, I'm going to work in a company in western Europe and I will have a good salary and I will start the slow transition between the organization that gave me the best 4 years of my life to corporate life. This year I'm going to read at least that 52 books (at least one per week). This year I'm going to take my parents to Rome by plane and we are going to visit the city for at least 4 days (on my own expense). These were the resolutions I managed to set so far for 2011, but I feel it's enough for this moment.

One of the best/worst moment that I went through in January was that my laptop crashed. I don't know the reason for it, but I know that all of a sudden, I could not load windows anymore and the partition with windows installed was not seen. The bad part was that I realized I could not fix it and I needed help (direct hit in my ego) and this came together with the fact that I could not ask for help from anybody (all my friends with IT knowledge are in Romania). The best things were that I managed to find friends in Dominican Republic to help me repair it and that I did not call my old friends whom I used to help me repair it usually (which means I broke an addiction). I'm so happy I could solve the situation alone, but in the same time with friends. January was a breaking point for me; I broke a very important addiction and I'm free from one of the most challenging things in my life.

February showed me the other side of the coin: that in life you can obtain things you never dreamed about. In February I celebrated 4 months with my boyfriend in Dominican Republic in the most sweetest way possible: romantic dinner in a fancy restaurant on the seashore of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Caribbeans. While being there I realized I have never even dreamed about doing that and yet it happened. This reminded me of something a guy told me home at the high-school reunion: good things come to those you who wait. I have never waited for this, but it was a good thing :)

This year is going to be changing and good :) and it started like that :)