The life of the unglamorous

Just a little update:

***I (though I am a tad bit embarrassed to admit) actually repeated the Hannah Montana song in my head in a few situations this week.
***I am still sick...but able to move.
***I am getting excited about coming home to have Tivo again...oh the days of rewinding live TV and having the good ol' fashion American Food Network (though I did watch Paula Dean today and it made me smile she was at least on in NZ)
***I am VERY glad I saw Dark Night last night--SUCH A GOOD MOVIE! Didn't think I would like it--loved it! Heath Ledger is BRILLIANT!
***I am speaking at something this Saturday and finally feel semi-prepared. Getting ready to speak for something is always a process I love and hate at once. I try to get really quiet to figure out what I should speak on. Then once I am there I tend to "feel the room" out and adjust accordingly. I actually love the moment once I am there and have to figure it out. But the only way you can do that and do it well, is if you do the hard work of being really quiet and listening before. Once I am done I am glad I did but I hate it....probably because there is no set rule to follow or memorize. It is just quiet and a pen. Then when I get to the event I am always so glad that I did it. Let's hope this one turns out okay.
***I am getting VERY excited about Fiji....2 weeks away!!!

I wondered this week if life always feels unglamorous to the person living it. I was telling someone about my experiences and they were so excited and thought my life sounded so cool. Which makes me shake my head, while I have LOVED my experiences, especially here. I think that if you saw all the times that are not posted on this blog...you wouldn't really think that it is that great. Lots of tears, boring everyday stuff (that granted always seems to be a good story, but still just boring stuff), hard situations that I survive through and cry when I get home about, lots of fear over stuff that most people wouldn't be afraid of, more tears, and well...more tears. I was talking to a friend today and she was sharing how doing something that seems so incredible that she is doing is really really hard. And I thought, that is kind of life. People that are accomplishing things that are huge, living lives we want to live and doing things we never thought we could do are just as scared as us...they just actually do the things. Are people really as brave as we think they are, or do they just try stuff with tons of fear coursing through their bodies? I think that is usually the case. Now in the end they still really are brave, but they aren't brave because of what they are doing or accomplishing--they are brave for walking through their personal wall of fear.

Everyone's wall looks different. My wall coming here probably looks nothing like what yours would look like. I had so many internal things I had to face to come and stay here for so long...though the things that didn't scare me would scare some of you--brand new country, lots of new friends, new job, by myself...The things that scared me would probably not even make you anxious. Life is funny that way. We compare ourselves to others and think they are so much stronger than us, but really in the end our strength lies in different places, but until we stop looking at their strength which highlights our weakness we never get to actually live in our strong parts. Isn't life funny sometimes....