When I was younger, I used to wonder what my life would be like when I reached certain ages. I think I was only about 10, so my ideas of what I'd be doing and all the rest of it were rather skewed :) I mean, I thought 16 was impossibly old at one point in my life.

I'm not sure I made it past about 20, when I was wondering what my life would be like. If I did, I certainly skipped the age of 23. I mean, really, what an unremarkable number. Nothing exciting happens, it's not an even number, and it's not all that different from the number that comes before or the one that comes after, right?

But what I probably would have imagined, back in the day, is that I'd have some kind of career I was totally in love with, for one. I think I used to want to get married at about 23, too. I'm not sure my imagination ran to more complicated events.

What I never expected, though, was to pick up and leave the only home I've ever known, and set out for a place I'd never really been. Just because. I didn't expect to spend months struggling to find a job, and still only have a temporary one (good as it is). I really didn't expect to decide first that no way, no how was I ready to get married, and then a few months later...oh wait, yes I am (just not by the time I turn 23).

The scariest thing I had to do, since moving away from Houston, was just decide that I wasn't going back. This move was supposed to be a trial. I was supposed to find a job in about six months, or move back to Houston. So of course that possibility of moving back across the country was constantly hanging over my head. At this point, I have at least proven that I can pay my own way, and that I only need my parents as a safety net. But it took just deciding that, whatever happened, I'd find a way to stay here for me to really accept Eugene as any kind of a home.

So I feel like I've accomplished something enormous, even though it doesn't always seem like it. I have, in one year after finishing college, found a place that's mine. Maybe I don't always feel like I belong here, maybe I sometimes feel like a hopeless foreigner. But that feeling doesn't come nearly as often as it used to. And here, I have people who like me just for me. I have a place that's mine, I have a routine that's mine. I have a wonderful boyfriend who helped me find all of this. I have wonderful family that has put up (and continues to put up) with my occasional homesickness and my doubts.

So I guess what I'm saying is that whatever I could have dreamed up as a child about being 23, this is better :)