Starting the Kaya Journey

Looking at my nails I realize that I’ve chewed them down as far as I have in years.  Another day of an active subconscious like the last two and they’d be bleeding.  Good thing things have settled.  I had first noticed my excessive gnawing on the way to the airport.  I drew my hand from my mouth and sat on it.  Ten minutes later I found it back in the same place but with a bit more damage done. 

I thought it odd that my conscious was perfectly calm.  Its only thoughts were of getting on an airplane- one of my favorite acts in the whole world.  I don’t necessarily know if I like the flying bit.  I’m quite good at it being that I’m so small and can hold my water like a camel, but it’s the preclude to a greater adventure that I love, the introduction chapter to something exciting. 

And apparently while I willed my conscious not to think about the adventures ahead, including the inevitable challenges, my subconscious couldn’t fixate on anything else.  Here it was taking its anxiousness out on my digits.  I’d like to think that my anxious subconscious is separate from me, that I’m above it, but I’m not.  I had and still have every right to embrace some anxiety. 

The day I drove to the airport was Tuesday.  Originally, I was supposed to fly to Manchester, work Wednesday through Friday, possibly meet up with some friends living throughout Europe in either London or Dublin, then get back to Manchester to work Monday and Tuesday to fly home Wednesday.  Six days before my departure my boss’s boss asked me to lunch.  I have do admit I was nervous then- I hadn’t been working long enough to do anything horribly wrong, nor anything good worth recognizing.  We sat down and he said we’d get straight to business before we relaxed to eat.  Now, he’s not the kind of guy to beat around the bush, ever, and his list of degrees in conjunction with his immovable demeanor combine for a very intimidating man.  I held my breath and he got started. 

He wanted to know what I was doing the second week in April.  I was thinking, “Anything you want me to,” but instead the words that came out of my mouth were along the lines of having a flexible schedule.  Then he point blank asked me if I’d lead a program for a week in Vietnam.  The other program director would be having a baby.  A normal person would say no, acknowledge that they, at 22, were not seasoned enough to act as the intermediary between a local culture they didn’t know and a long-returning client professor with his 17 graduate business students.  No thank you, that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen with blaming fingers pointed at me.  So I said “Absolutely!”  This is where my palm would slam into my forehead to ensure my cranium hadn’t gone hollow.  He didn’t skip a beat and went on that he would be extending my trip in Manchester then by a week so that I could make a Program Leader training in London the 18^th and 19^th.  Since we couldn’t cancel my return flight from Manchester, we’d just book me a one-way home from London.  That’d be two weeks in Manchester then London, home for a day, then off to California with the family for a week.  Okay, Jenny.  Breathe.  What’s the next step?

So I rushed home.  Huge changes needed to be made and there would be some roommates made unhappy in the process.  I would be gone most of March and April between Manchester, California, Vietnam, and an RV trip for work through South Dakota at the end of April.  Paying rent just wasn’t realistic nor affordable.  Time to find a sublet and move out in less than five days.  Thank the good lord that I have the most understanding, accommodating, and wonderful friends in the world.  I’ve been blessed to have them as roommates and companions for so long.  I don’t know why they put up with me.

Today is Thursday.  Yesterday I landed in Manchester just before 8am.  I had spent the last two days moving out of the house after interviewing half a dozen sublets and had gotten little sleep on the plane.   I was received by my boss, Hech, at the airport.  The drive home was less than ideal but not unwarm.  Hech is an amazing woman with a huge heart and juggles more moving parts than I could ever count.  This is displayed in her erratic driving.  Once safely to her flat, I was in for a rinse, we wolfed down breakfast, and headed into the office to meet the nearly all-female team.  Near mid-afternoon I was imitating a bobble-head so decided I’d be the brash American that put aside my computer and took a fifteen minute cat nap on my desk.  I got away with it without negative comment or jokes made at my expense.  Lucky me. 

I needed the rest, for tomorrow the “Big Cheese” is flying in, a trip he is making just because of the project I am working on.  I will be presenting my findings.  Oh joy.  He has also booked himself, Hech and I a trip to Wales for a weekend of fun.  I have serious reasons to be nervous.  If my reporting is not up to par I have to spend an entire weekend with a man I desperately want to do right by after failing to do the one thing he asked of me thus far.  If my reporting is up to par, I have to spend an entire weekend with a man I desperately want to do right by.  Either way, my subconscious has found reason to continue to gnaw away at my fingernails.  Wish me luck!