Hi, I'm back.

And it feels soooooooo good.

Almost.

It's a bit strange because I came back to almost the exact same Shire that I'd left six weeks ago. We had a dinner party with the same delicious food, the same old friends, the same circle of inside jokes and shared memories that has united and kept us together as friends all these years. It felt like I'd never even left the cozy comforts of my orange dining room. And yet, my thoughts were as far away tonight as they had been the last time. They were with the new friends I'd made over the past month and a half, the new jokes, and the new experiences, most of which I know I will never ever have again - or at least not for a very long time.

I know that this longing for the way things were will pass quickly. There's no real point reminiscing about the past and thinking futile thoughts anyway. Just gotta let time do its thing and enjoy the present state of where I am and who I'm with.

Going abroad has definitely instilled a sense of confidence in my ability to adapt to new situations and learn new skills. Over the course of my six weeks in India, I found myself vowing to start this or improve that or restart blah many, many times. Here they are:

- Read more books, and not just novels
- Improve guitar skills and find the courage to play in front of people
- Learn a programming language
  - Or at the very least, learn CSS/HTML/Javascript
- Play around with more image-editing and design software
- Try to make risotto out of pizza box ingredients (lol)
- Take more interesting pictures and figure out a way of storing and sharing them effectively (this weird Flickr/Facebook combination is not working out)
- Blog more
- Figure out what the fuck happened in Inception

Reading should come easily, as I have a 40-minute commute every day. I'm hoping to set aside an hour each day for the guitar, but I already know that's a relatively ambitious and unrealistic amount of time. I'm going to get started on those two for the week and encourage myself by blogging about them.

Waking up in seven hours to go back to ThoughtWorks, only at a different office. I'm determined to make this jetlag my bitch.