Pie.

For a while, I was pretty sure I was moving back home this summer and not renewing my contract, as many of my posts on here might have indicated. What a roller coaster. One week, I was in love with Turkey, the next I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the couch beside my mom and never leave again. One day, I told my boss that I wouldn't be back next year. A couple days later, I told him that I changed my mind and would like to stay. And both times when I spoke with him, I was sure of what I was saying. Sure of my decision. Luckily, I haven't felt the strong urge to change my mind again, even now that I've been back in Reno for a few days, reconnecting with friends, reestablishing my role as a family member, reacquainting myself with a place that will always feel like home. Home, home. I know that at the end of the summer, I'll be returning to Turkey for another year. And I'm pretty sure I'll be looking forward to it.

The thing is, I'm always going to miss my family and Reno. I'm always going to miss my grad school cohort. I'm always going to miss my PC Romania friends and my old high school drama buddies. I'm never going to live those lives again. They're gone. If I tried to move back to and recreate any past time of happiness, it would never feel the same. I imagine it would only feel hollow and superficial. I do, at times, really miss my old self and the person I was in those places. I'm not wildly different depending on where I am, but I feel like there's some inner glow that I just don't or didn't feel in certain places and stages of my life. Glow is a cheesy word, but I can't think of any other word to describe it. I didn't feel glowy in China. At all. And I didn't feel it much when I was in Eugene, either. It's a certain self-confidence and contentedness that makes me not question and dissect everything I do. It makes me laugh more. It makes me happier. I don't understand fully what that inner glow depends on, but it doesn't feel as bright as I'd like it to in Turkey. And that's part of why I think I want to stay. What is it that I'm lacking there that I had elsewhere, where the glow was more solid? Can I create it on my own, anywhere? Does it mean I need a new hobby? I need more people? Closer people? More sleep? Better Turkish? A bigger piano? A different job? Stronger coffee? I want to figure this glow thing out and see if I can master it. Master myself. My thoughts and my own happiness. I know that it is, mostly, all up to me, but jeez what a big task. Making myself happy. It's easier to blame outside things - mean people, a bad job, a crappy apartment. But those are all things that I am in control of and can change. I can choose and adjust the adjectives that go with those nouns. There's no reason for me to be unhappy and unglowy in Turkey. So, my task for next year is to dissect life piece by piece and find the pieces that bring about the most significant amount of glowiness and cultivate them. Preserve them in a jam jar. Maybe I'll even make a pie chart or a graph or something displaying the results of my dissecting. Or just a pie. Pie is pretty glowy.