I am not a big risk-taker. In fact, I have the personality type characterized by being high in "harm avoidance". I've been feeling very unsettled lately, especially about all this residency stuff. At first, it was very fun and exciting to me. But as I realize I like many of these places, it's starting to become scary in "how the heck am I going to be able to rank these places??!" I really feel like this is a hard decision to make on my own and really wish I had some hand-holding. I feel like it's a big risk to "hope" for matching one place and getting my heart set on it. For I feel that the greatest hope and expectation, without being met, often lead to my greatest disappointment. But I guess I should change my current perspective of "What do I feel is the BEST fit and what do I try to rank first (in February)" to realizing that, because I could be comfortable many of these places, this is a win-win(-win-win-win) situation, right? Aargh! JB, I really, really envy you knowing where you are going!
"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace." - Amelia Earhart.
"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace." - Amelia Earhart.
I need some of this!!!!!
As far as other risks: Wednesday was a "free day" for me in Colorado. My interviews were done and I had a day to hang out! I was all excited to take an expedition in my little rental car out to Frisco, Breckenridge, Idaho Springs, or other mountain town for some views/hiking/exploring. However, as early as my dinner with the St. Anthony residents on Tuesday night, I was hearing that the Denver area was in store for a lot of snow! The residents kind of scoffed, because predictions of "5 inches" can often really only result in 0.5 inches sometimes, but I heard estimates of up to 20 inches!
I woke up initially around 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning and there wasn't much at all. But by 8 a.m., around when CC left for work, it was really coming down. She called me once she got into town ensuring that, if I hadn't left yet for any sort of trip, "DON'T." Listening to the news and knowing my high-in-harm-avoidance personality (as well as lack of experience in snowy, mountain driving and the fact that I chose to forgo additional insurance on the rental car), I decided not to venture anywhere.
..
...which ended up being fun! Cathleen came home from work (they sent her right back!) and we just had a very low-key day of talking, laughing, and hanging out. We did venture out to the grocery store (did you see her fridge from the other day's blog?! I have an "after" pic but can't get it onto this computer!) and also to the Mines field house to work out, but there really was a lot of snow! I was supposed to fly out from Denver to DC this morning, but they shut down DIA until noon tomorrow and no flights were leaving.... So it has been a lot of camping out, talking, watching funny things on TV, and shoveling! Golden, the town Cathleen lives in, got about 36 inches of snow in the last 2 days!!! Yikes! I think this is among the biggest storms Denver has ever seen! To the right is the view as we looked outside her apt. (you can see the snow up to the fence!). I did take more pictures but they're deleted from my camera so I can't get them here. Sorry!
I woke up initially around 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning and there wasn't much at all. But by 8 a.m., around when CC left for work, it was really coming down. She called me once she got into town ensuring that, if I hadn't left yet for any sort of trip, "DON'T." Listening to the news and knowing my high-in-harm-avoidance personality (as well as lack of experience in snowy, mountain driving and the fact that I chose to forgo additional insurance on the rental car), I decided not to venture anywhere.
.....which ended up being fun! Cathleen came home from work (they sent her right back!) and we just had a very low-key day of talking, laughing, and hanging out. We did venture out to the grocery store (did you see her fridge from the other day's blog?! I have an "after" pic but can't get it onto this computer!) and also to the Mines field house to work out, but there really was a lot of snow! I was supposed to fly out from Denver to DC this morning, but they shut down DIA until noon tomorrow and no flights were leaving.... So it has been a lot of camping out, talking, watching funny things on TV, and shoveling! Golden, the town Cathleen lives in, got about 36 inches of snow in the last 2 days!!! Yikes! I think this is among the biggest storms Denver has ever seen! To the right is the view as we looked outside her apt. (you can see the snow up to the fence!). I did take more pictures but they're deleted from my camera so I can't get them here. Sorry!
I'm sort of feeling a bit uneasy, as I don't think I will be able to fly out of Denver to meet my family in Washington in time to take our plane to Mexico (scheduled for Saturday). I've spent a lot of time on the phone with United and US Airways trying to figure out what to do for flying. It looks like I may be here until Christmas Day and could possibly fly straight there to Cancun to meet them. Ideally something would open up on the 23rd or 24th, but there are thousands and thousands of holiday travelers stranded here in Denver. I can't imagine being stranded with someone more fun than Cathleen, though. She is truly one of my most favorite people in the world to hang out with!! For some reason, we are going through a few of the same things right now and she understands exactly my uneasiness with dealing with some of it, so it has been great to connect with her again. We have so many funny memories from college too! She also doesn't think I'm weird for breaking into random songs, or drinking hot water (she, too, has her own idiosyncrasies!). I'm trying to convince her to use her days off and join us in Mexico for the holidays. We'll see...
Keep your fingers crossed so that I may sometime make it to Mexico to have Christmas with my family! I don't want the airlines to take undue risk in flying too early off of icy runways or whatever, but I would really, really love to be able to make the trip to meet them soon.
And to end with a more uplifting quote on risk:
"To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing."
No comments:
Post a Comment