30 and Freaking Out
Packing up my apartment in Jerusalem.
Welcome to my brand-new blog, where you can follow my zany adventures across America during my Year of Freaking Out, otherwise known as a sabbatical from adulting, otherwise known as a slightly late quarter-life crisis, otherwise known as another weird thing that Abra is doing in her endless quest to avoid becoming a functional adult human.
I’ve decided to call it the Thirty-Year Itch because that’s precisely what this year is about. I reached the age of 30, had a personal crisis as a result of being single and unhappy at that depressing milestone, and reconsidered all of my life choices.
What did that mean for me? It meant quitting an awesome and prestigious media job in Jerusalem, packing up my apartment, and leaving Israel, where I’ve lived for the past 6 years. It meant returning to the US to soak up the worldliness, beauty, consumerism, diversity, and open roads of the country of my birth for a year of adventure, travel and exploration.
Being very successful in my media career.
I’m not thinking past the next few months, because that’s where I’m at right now. I left a very lonely, stagnant situation in an attempt to break free of sameness and monotony, so long-term plans aren’t really my jam at the moment, which, as you can imagine, frightens my parents to no end, but hey, I’m 30 now, they can’t tell me what to do.
I’m not yet sure how personal I want this blog to be, so I’m going to skate over the details. Suffice it to say that I was not happy where I was and and felt a deep thirst for a massive change and new experiences. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but I am 1000% sure it was the right one, and that’s a comforting certainty. I’m sure more will be revealed as the year goes on.
To be serious and cliched for a moment, one of my main goals this year is to find out more about what I want to do during my sojourn on this planet - to discover what I really like, what I’m good at, what makes me happy, what excites me. I want to learn more about myself, my abilities, my limits, my hopes/dreams/blah blah blah. Most of this causes normal people to blink rapidly and nod in a
I-want-to-seem-like-I-totally-get-it-and-you-should-totally-pursue-your-dreams-but-never-in-a-million-years-would-any-of-this-ever-appeal-to-me-and-I-think-you’re-crazy kind of way.
And everyone keeps telling me I have to keep a blog, but then when you actually do go and create a blog and tell people about it and post links to Facebook, they think it’s boring and self-absorbed and they’re not in the least interested. At least that’s how I generally feel about other people’s blogs. But I do think my journey should be chronicled, because I am a chronicler, and for those few people who are interested (hi Dad!) this will be a (hopefully) informative and amusing space to watch. I’ll try to include many pictures for the easily bored.
So here goes nothing.