The coming back

A few minutes after midnight and only a couple of days for the beginning of the new year. I am listening to Virgin Radio online. I'm at my parents' place at my hometown. I have been here for around a week, and it feels good but at the same time it feels kind of weird...

You may spend some months abroad, you may start a new life far from the previous one but it's surprisingly easy to summarize to anybody what that new life of yours entails. It takes just a few minutes to do so and then everything comes back to routine. I can enjoy routine for a few days but then I get bored of it...and NYC comes back to my head.

This week I have spent in my hometown so far has been nice. I have seen my relatives again, enjoyed Christmas dinners and lunches, received gifts, partied with my friends... things that I have missed during my time in NY. Although my time in NYC so far has been awesome, even better than expected, I have missed these little things and it's always nice to come back to where you belong.

I have also had time to visit the city where I lived for almost four years before heading to Stern last August. It's just been a 2-day trip but it's been intense and I've had the chance to see again my friends from my previous job and my friends from outside work too, to sleep again in the apartment where I used to live during my last two years, to recall memories, sensations and feelings, for both places and people...and in the end I have come back to my hometown cracking a bittersweet smile: great memories and happiness for seeing those people again on the one side, and a feeling of general sorrow for leaving once again, on the other.

I have only been abroad for four months, which is is not a lot of time. But I have realized that lots of things have happened in the meantime (I was aware of almost all of them but talking about them directly with those involved is completely different from an email): friends who have got married, who are now engaged, who are going to become parents, who have new boy/girlfriends, who have split up with them, who are thinking about changing jobs, who have moved to new places....only in four months!!! It feels like many more things happen when you look from outside.

On Wednesday night I was having a drink with some friends and one of them suggested that I should try to give an additional input to the blog, essentially in terms of things that I may be learning from all these experiences I am going through. Well, at least I will try to do so...

Just a beginning. I want to be able to maintain what I have now with my friends, but not only for the first four months (that has proven to be not very difficult), but also as time keeps going by and I spent more time far away from them. I have to engage myself and engage them in doing so. And, in the future, once my Stern experience is over, I want to be able to feel the same way about the friends I have met - and will be meeting - in NYC.

It's been a little philosophical post (I promise I ain't stoned!) but it's almost the close of the year and that's not a bad time to think a little deeply.

Ciao