JUMP! ...if you wanna...

View from my friend's place in Bruxelles.

When I visit a new place, I always play a game of asking myself if I should like to live there. What job would I do? What would my house look like? Where would it be? Who would be my friends and where would we hang out...? Those types of questions.

The problem (for me) with these games is that 99% of the time no matter WHAT country I'm in, I can come up with a pretty satisfying scenario which makes me start to seriously consider moving to those places and making the story into reality!!! As you can imagine after putting together a pretty detailed plan of real estate development while running a hotel and surf school in Costa Rica, it was hard to return to grey, rainy, cold NYC last winter.

Same thing happened when I traveled to Brasil with my friend, where I clearly invisioned living in a sweet little appartment on the Ipanema strip working for some big time American company in Rio. Going running on the most amazing beach and drinking lots of beers to samba beats at night.

In Panama, I would have worked as some kind of planner for the Panama Canal while living in a glitzy penthouse in one of those high rise buildings in Panama City. A given since I planned to marry one of those rich boys from Club Union (the oldest country club in Panama, with the most exclusive members, formed by the original families that helped to establish Panama).

In Italy... oh ITALY, this was perhaps most hard to get over... not only did I have the good story worked out, I almost went with it. I still have my italian accountant's business card in my walet.

But everytime, something stoped me. I think because there was always that curiousity of what other stories are out there?? How did I know that THAT story was really for me?

I guess the main thing is to really think about the story you really want and then to just do it! To just GO for IT! There can be lots of stories and countries in the world to see and experience, but its impossible to look through all the scenarios and then choose one, you have to just jump at some point.

A toast: to having the desire to jump, to jumping high and far, and ALWAYS landing softly with two feet on the ground.