Sunday evening and what's next

I'm sitting at home on a Sunday evening at 7:30ish, and I'm loving that the daylight is just now fading.  I feel calm and content after a great weekend road trip with my friend Gloria to my sister's place four hours' drive away.  I will be in Mumbai in three weeks, and I'm trying to savor the time with people here, the relative quiet, and the familiar surroundings.  After 7 years living in Chicago, leaving for Mumbai and whatever comes next after that is going to be bittersweet.  I'll be turning myself upside down in plenty of ways, but the one that's been on my mind is how I'll be missing the people I can currently see and seeing the people I currently miss.  All of my relationships will change, and it's hard to imagine how it will feel.

Gloria asked me during the drive back home whether there was any year in my life that I see as my best.  And I said, I think it's now.  Maybe that's because it's now, but when 2011 arrived I thought it would be my best year yet, and so far, so good.  I think I'd be hard pressed to pick out any year in the past that I felt was so full of opportunities and lessons and growth and new kinds of happiness, as this year has been so far and promises to continue to be.  I am anxious about the vast unknowns, but they are also what give me a sense of the possibilities ahead.  Things could all blow up, but then I'd adapt and try something else -- I think that's really the only way for me to live.