Starting from Scratch

art by Lisa Congdon
instagram.com/p/BaeXe05BTEh

2017 has gifted me a handful of blessings, but these blessings were often clouded with dark and gloomy clouds that required patience and careful examination.

Our new house and back yard is an amazing fit for us, and well worth all the paperwork, negotiations and strife of weeks and expensive costs it took us to get in here. Often I feel like we don't want to go anywhere now. I could just camp out in our backyard under the stars.

Everyone keeps asking "are you feeling settled in?" about our house.

Well, we're feeling settled but the house is not quite looking settled. I need another two weeks at least to feel I can come out from under the rabble.

José and I have had zero vacations other than a short one to see my dad in Raleigh mid-September (which was rough on the dogs, leaving them in a new house), but we did take quite a few staycation days in Boston in August.

I've had two emergency family visits to California for my sister, and probably a third this December. Unfortunately each time, I barely saw the ocean, but zipped in and out without much time for calm or reflection. I am grateful that on my recent trip, two of my mom's closest friends were embracing us, literally and figuratively of course, and helping us manage the grief and struggle. The easiest way to put it is my sister is having a hard time - she's down, less than motivated, exhausted and needs a lift in spirit. I think she may need a change in her scenery, too.

Although it wasn't easy to decide or easy to execute, I decided to leave my job at Harvard in late October and pursue something that makes my heart sing more, and I don't mean, like art and writing, because those will stay in my heart as hobbies, but I am listening to my job-related instincts better than before. Finance was really wiping me out in every possible capacity. A new career direction in career counseling is something I now realize I've been gravitating toward for about six years with my volunteer work at Career Collaborative. I had a lot of experience mentoring and counseling peers at Harvard this summer, as well.

It was touching that when I left the role, a handful of staff who had started new since May each thanked me for the influences I had on them when they were hired, and in fact, they (along with my boss) gave me a set of beautiful paper journals and a set of colored pens that warmed up my heart. It was a very, very sweet departure and not bitter at all.

I am glad to have learned so much about the Kennedy School students, academics, and staff, and so glad I made a lasting impression on some of my colleagues. I will stay in touch with them just as I do with my Facing History friends, and will never forget the weekend in September that I was assigned to lead 50 grad students and alumni to a Mystic River cleanup project, and one of my volunteers, turns out, was the Secretary of the Interior for President Obama (well, alrighty then!)

cheers,
and more to come.