Prague. The world. New chapters. All that ...

(This is from I note I posted on Facebook a few weeks ago. Just thought it helpful to post it here, too, as an explanation of what's going on.)

The year that just left was a strange one for me. It began with the last few months at my most recent job. I was writing and designing, meeting interesting people, working on big projects and had great coworkers who've become great friends. All this despite the creaking walls of a crumbling news industry around us. But I decided on a whim to step out of it for a while, partially because y'know, newspapers! Sheesh! And also just because I had saved up some money living at home and wanted to travel.

So in April, I did, and the traveling was ridiculously good fun and life-changing and stuff.

Summer brought reality, the gloomy job search and the many omens of an impending economic downturn. I was beginning to wonder if I made the right decision to leave one job without the security of another. I told myself if there were no job prospects by the end of the summer, I'd do something drastic. Move to a big city and hope for the best. Join a monastery (job security!). But I kept sending out resumes and clips and checking job sites and writing follow-up e-mails — feeling for the first time what it was like to wait. And wait, and wait.

It was around August that things shifted. The job search was proving fruitless and I needed to decide what could work if journalism wouldn't. At the urging of my former editor (and sometimes life coach), I started looking into teaching English abroad. It was always swimming around deep in the back of my head, along with joining the Peace Corps and what all. I just needed someone to point out that occasional shimmer down there in the darkness and tell me what it was we were actually seeing.

I applied to a school in Prague. They accepted me. It felt incredibly quick and almost too easy. I got worried and started doing more extensive research, finding programs with better credentials. I found another school in Prague that was accredited through a London college. I applied and they sent me a writing test. I sent it back and they scheduled a phone interview. I took a verbal test over the phone and we traded a few questions.

This was all done while I was on vacation with my family in Florida. In the midst of those end-of-summer days on the beach, the school sent me an acceptance e-mail.

The same day, sitting right below the acceptance letter in my inbox were responses from two job applications I had sent out months before. I read them with a mixture of surprise and dread. I had just made such a huge decision and now I was getting inquiries about a career I decided to leave for a while.

And then (Oooooh and then!), only a few minutes later, the phone rang. Another job inquiry. They wanted to see more clips. I nearly crumpled and stuttered my way through the call. So, for those counting at home, that's one acceptance letter to an English teaching program in Europe, two responses on job applications I'd been waiting for all summer and one phone call. All in the same morning.

I didn't know if God was playing a practical joke or trying to steer me away from Prague. Now, I'm starting to see it as all to help me figure out if my heart was really in it — and also 'cause he probably just likes to watch me squirm, too.

At the time, though, I was completely torn. I took a chance and followed up the job inquiries. I sent more clips and one of them set up an interview in September. I contacted the school and asked if I could hold off on the program until the jobs pan out. To my amazement, they told me to consider it an open invitation as they were so impressed with me. That struck hard: Here I was putting off such a huge experience for the potential comfort of a job in a place I'm used to, going through much of the same motions I was trying to move myself away from. In months of job searches with little to no response, I was shrugging off the one opportunity that wanted me as much as I wanted it.

Needless to say, those other jobs never panned out. It was a lot more waiting. For two months. I learned for the first time that even a good interview doesn't mean it's necessarily in the bag. Still, rejection letters just made it that much easier to make up my mind. And I pointed myself back toward Prague.

Now, I'm nearly set to head to Europe at the beginning of February for four-and-a-half weeks of training. I've paid my deposit and bought my plane tickets. I'll learn to teach English as a foreign language and get tons of practice in the classroom. Plus, I'll be paired with a counselor to help me determine where I'd like to teach and help me set up job interviews while I finish the course. I realize I'll be back to the ruthless job search again, but I'll feel better armed with a new job skill and facing a different industry.

I'm excited to return to Prague, but really, it's just an added bonus to this whole adventure. I know I want to stay in Europe, preferably teaching in a larger city, so it's what comes after Prague I'm most excited about. Living and working in Europe has always been a dream of mine. It's going to be difficult and it's going to be amazing. I'm excited and scared shitless at the same time.

And I won't abandon writing. It's still the only thing that comes naturally to me, after breathing. I plan to freelance, perhaps even become a travel writer. I hope to find some English-language publication in wherever I end up that wants a part-time copy editor or writer.

(According to a palm reader in the French Quarter this weekend, I will also find love in Europe. I am not sure I don't not disagree.)

I'll also, obviously, use this blog to continue writing. There'll be posts and stories and updates and pictures and maybe even video. And I promise they'll be more succinct than this — it's just the culmination of a lot of thinking and months of planning.