Second to Last

Day 364

ONE DAY REMAINING

What can I say now that a day that I thought would never get here is now on the brink of arriving, and a year that I thought would be incredibly hard on me has almost reached its end? I can't believe that tomorrow it will be one year since that day I discovered that the man I had a coffee date with had been convicted of murder, convincing me that it was finally time to throw my hands up and give up on dating completely for a little while.  I will admit that at first it was all about the novelty of it, although I definitely did recognize the potential and the value of undertaking such a year.  I wasn't even sure I was going to go through with it, to be honest.  Deep down, I hoped that I would actually stick to it and get something out of it, but I also knew that I do tend to get bored with things if I don't see immediate results.  Plus the Drama Queen in me just liked the idea of being "out there" doing something that was - for me - quite radical.  However, really deciding that I would spend the time "alone" (and I put alone in quotes, because I know I was not completely successful at keeping my mind off men - darn that masculine gender for just being so appealing to me!); doing a lot of reflection and insight into why I reached the point I reached one year ago; and having this blog (and knowing how many of you are rooting for me) have all kept me focused and working toward tomorrow.  Now it's here, and it's time to stop looking backward and begin to look forward.

Part of the reason that it's hard to believe that I'm actually - finally - here at the end of this year off from dating is that the past three weeks have been a blur of preparation and busy-ness; I had the opportunity to go with a group from my church to a small town in Mexico in order to build a house for a family in need.  We were gone from the 24th of July until the 4th of August, which pretty much ate up a lot of the final weeks of my hiatus.  It was an amazing experience; I have a hard time putting it into words.  Suffice it to say that it had a huge impact on me. I know that one of the results of this year off - which in itself actually made it a lot easier for me to go on this trip - is that I now know that I love to travel, and I want to do mission work.  I know that when I am an RN, I will want to use those skills to help people who don't have access to the same kind of medical care that we do.

I don't have a lot to say right now; I'm still rather overwhelmed, both emotionally and physically, with unpacking and organizing and financial matters that have been left for the past few weeks, so I'm going to make this a short one.  Here, however, is a little movie I made: my video diary compilation from Mission Mexico.  I put it together to share my thoughts on the trip and some of the fun moments we had.  I hope you enjoy it.

(There is a short section where there is no sound; YouTube didn`t like that I used a DC Talk song so they deleted the audio for that part of the video.  Sorry `bout that.)

Mission Mexico: My Experience

And tomorrow is the last day, so I will have to find some special way to celebrate it.  Let me know if you can think of anything and send your ideas my way.

L