Saturday, October 07, 2006

10,368 Miles Away

I love checking my site stats to see who has visited and how they got here. Just a few minutes ago, I saw that my latest visitor was from Alice Springs, Northern Territory, AUSTRALIA. That's 10,368 miles away.

It's a small world after all.

Take last night, for example. I had a cocktail party and once again I tried to mix things up. I invited new co-workers, neighbors and friends. It's interesting to see if/how the different worlds collide. So I was surprised to see Rich's friend Ed immediately walk up to my boss's husband and say hello. Turns out they used to hang out together in the same dart league. And then later, I saw my yoga friend Lisa chatting with my friend Cindy and they grabbed me to ask Jill's last name, and I remembered that Cindy was friends with Jill who used to also be in our yoga class. And it was fun to see Jim and Jane arrive at the same time - I didn't know they knew each other and neither one of them knew that the other knew me!

All in all, another great party. There was a steady stream of people all night long - the first guests arrived right after work at 5:00, a second round of folks who don't work in town came between 6:00-6:30, it was almost 8:00 by the time Susan and Julie arrived and then things were a blur until 9:30 when things started breaking up but it wasn't over yet - Amy arrived just before 10:00. Everyone else said their goodbyes and then it was just the two of us, chatting until almost 11:30.

We talked a lot about relationships and community and identity and I realized that I am still struggling with that last piece - identity. Who am I? I'm not what I do, yet it's hard for me to define myself outside of the context of my job. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Do I need to be anything? How can I find a job that I love and still make a living at it? Questions that were fine to toss out when I'd been drinking for the last five hours ... a little too weighty for me this morning.

Back to cleaning up the porch ...

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