a finger across the cake icing

So, instead of spending my moments worrying so far into the future about what I will be doing after I graduate college, I've decided to spend those moments thinking about this upcoming summer. Wow, I suppose that's still kind of far ahead, huh?

I have the hardest time living in the present.

Picture this: I was sitting at my laptop this afternoon, headphones dug into my ears, searching Google for clues to my future. I know I need to find an Internship. Publishing companies and Literary Magazines and any other writerly career look highly upon those students who have experience...and an Internship would do just the trick. This is the thing, though. There's always a thing.

I don't particularly want to move to New York City....or Los Angeles. I don't think I'm as big a city gal as I wanted to be, at one time. I don't think I could tackle living in NYC by myself. And Lord knows I am not "West Coast". Good grief, no. I really have no desire to live, even for a summer, in either of those places. And those are where all of my prospective Internships are located, which is not surprising, not at all.

So...the kicker is this. I've been thoroughly doing my research, and there are Internships abroad that sound absolutely lovely. Argentina. Peru. South Africa. Honduras. I can't help it. I am in love with seeing the world. I think I left myself in Africa, and I would give anything to go back.

I could live with a family, incorporate myself into the culture, eat the food, learn the language. I could spend my summer writing, writing, traveling, and writing. I could meet the locals, have a favorite "spot", wear the clothes, be myself. And who am I? I am that girl that keeps fidgeting in class because the sky looks so blue out the window. I'm the girl who gets so stir-crazy in Erie that she drives hours, aimlessly, until she stops at a farm to buy freshly picked raspberries for no apparent reason, and then goes back to the apartment to make a pie.

I'm the girl that has tasted her future, a finger across the cake icing, and wonders desperately how she can get back to where she once was.

...And maybe this is my opportunity. I need an Internship, and they are just as available in South Africa as they are in California, New York.

So. Come with me. :)