could i give up all this?

i have sort of surreptitiously been blog-stalking a friend from high school for about the last week. we randomly ran into each other about a year ago at church in dc. we "friended" on facebook, and then didn't talk for months. recently she convinced a mutual friend to join facebook, and then i started "seeing" her on facebook more often. eventually i internet-chained around until i stumbled upon her blog, and i have learned more about her there than i ever knew before -- as is so often the case with this marvelous internet.

so then i start clicking around on her blog. she's doing amazing things, traveling the world and living everywhere, seeing everything, doing everything with her jetsetter husband. i'm a little envious of that. i was precisely at the point in my career when i was going to begin doing these sorts of things when that baby showed up and changed everything. literally had been chosen for the job and was filling out the paperwork when the call came. and i quit the job, and i left all those possibilities behind.

and so now i look at this friend's life as documented on her blog and i think about what might have been, and then i look around at my life now and compare the shades of the grass. could i give up all this? would i want to?

yes. husband and baby, i'm going to budapest. thanks for the good times.

no, no, no. of course not. looking back on the path that brought me here is like looking at a dance finely choreographed, leading to this specific place -- though it certainly all seemed a jumble then. and i'm still lost in the dance now, just as i always have been, but i'm confident that i'm on the right stage.