I'm perfectly comfortable outside of my comfort zone

I had the first "What the fuck am I doing" moment as I was drifting off to sleep last night.

The last time I had one of those moments was as I was packing my bags to go live in Cuba for four months. I picked up my Spanish dictionary and as I did so I suddenly realised I'm moving to a communist country where I really don't know the language, I have nowhere to live, and I'm counting on some course I found on the Internet.

I guess I just hadn't thought about it that way before. For the first time, I got scared. I thought, "What the fuck am I doing?"

Just then I heard some kind of Indian war whoop outside and looked up to see Johnny S barreling through my parents' yard, tearing his t-shirt off along the way, and throwing himself into our pool. Apparently he wanted to swim. He made some comment I can no longer remember, but I know it was funny because I recorded it in a journal later. I started to laugh at him and just like that I was ok again. I didn't experience any more "What the fuck" moments until I was actually in Havana, during my first breakfast there when I couldn't choke a morsel down because I was so afraid (those who know my penchant for food will understand how mortally afraid I must have been). Fortunately, Havana turned out well, to say the least.

I think it's because I never give myself time to think these things through - then suddenly it hits that I'm taking a rather drastic step, and I'm not at all prepared. So the immediate response is, "What the fuck am I doing?"

This, like that "I hate endings" diatribe in the last post, is a feeling I'm used to. Last night as I hovered between sleep and awake, out of nowhere that cold fear suddenly gripped my heart and I thought: "This is madness, I'm giving up a job I love where I'm making a difference with people I love and friends and family that I love and a paycheque that while leaving me with the valid concern that I'm being exploited still just might one day allow me to own a piece of the Rock - and I'm doing it to toss thousands of dollars down the drain to go to yet another unknown country for three months where killing cows is their big thing and then off to some snotty school in London where they'll all make fun of my grammar for a degree that I don't even technically need and let's be honest, is kind of a bird degree anyway.

"What the fuck am I doing?"

(The grammar fear was prompted by Sweater's unending criticisms of me for using the term "whatever", and his constant refrain that in London "proper people just don't talk like that".)

Fortunately I have come to realise this is all a part of coming out of your comfort zone. As Mach and I so sagely agreed nearly two years ago while crawling over the deck of the Seamans desperately searching for Lady Leeward, it's called your comfort zone for a reason. Nobody said being out of it was comfortable.

So I recovered quickly last night and, sadly enough, fell asleep dreaming of pensions - an obvious sign that I have been working too hard. Who dreams of pay-to-play?

Not me for much longer!