I keep checking on my Jet Blue Flight Attendant application, hoping something will happen. So far it just says "under review." When I applied for United, they had a questionnaire and gave me a number to call to set up an interview right afterwards. On the other hand, I forgot I had even applied to Continental by the time I heard back from them.

Yesterday, I read Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho. I read his book The Alchemist before and I wanted to read something else of his to see if it was also so insightful and life changing. And I wasn't disappointed. It is about a girl named Maria who lives in Brazil. She believes love only causes pain and has regrets over lost opportunities. On vacation she meets someone who offers her work in Switzerland as a samba dancer, and wanting a great adventure, she accepts. While in Switzerland, she ends up working as a prostitute and gives in to where ever life pulls her. Until she meets a painter that brings her back to life. In many ways I have felt and feel like Maria. The best way to explain that is with some quotes from the book:

p.1] "we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let’s keep that beginning.”

p.4] “…and kept blaming her own stupidity in running away from the very thing she most wanted.”

p.151] “I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I’m a house wife and a prostitute, both of us living in the same body and doing battle with each other.

p.9] “When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds”

p.10] “When she arrived home, though, she allowed her universe to crumble; she cried all night, suffered for the next eight months and concluded that love clearly wasn’t made for her and that she wasn’t made for love.”

p.37] “I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life.”

p.53] ”And Maria thought about the little boy who had asked to borrow a pencil, about the young man who had kissed her and how she had kept her mouth closed, about her excitement at seeing Rio for the first time, about the men who had used her and given nothing back, about the passions and loves lost along the way. Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending as she had seen in films and read about in books. A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.”

p.109] “Well, there are really three of me, really, depending on who I’m with. There’s the Innocent Girl, who gazes admiringly at the man, pretending to be impressed by his tales of power and glory. Then there’s the Femme Fatale, who pounces on the most insecure and, by doing so, takes control of the situation and relieves them of responsibility, because then they don’t have to worry about anything. And, finally, there’s the Understanding Mother, who looks after those in need of advice and who listens with an all-comprehending air to stories that go in one ear and out the other. Which of the three would you like to meet?”

p.121] “And at that moment, she accepted everything that fate placed in her path.”

p.135] “Dreams like theirs never lasted long, and Maria had enough experience of life to know that reality usually choose not to fit in with her dreams.

p.173] “good enough” is very different from “best”.

p.208] “Original sin was not the apple that Eve ate, it was her belief that Adam needed to share precisely the thing she had tasted. Eve was afraid to follow her path without someone to help her, and so she wanted to share what she was feeling.”

p.245] "She looked around her; most of the thousands of books were love stories. It was always the same, meets someone, falls in love, loses them and finds them again.”

His books make me think about my life what I want. Maria talks about how being a prostitute is just like everyone else, sacrificing time and putting up with people she doesn't like for money. She talks about how you can put money in a bank, but you can't get time back. How she could make excuses why she can't follow her dreams and work longer to save more money, but everyone has to know the point at which they should stop (that applies to everything, not just saving money). Now is that time that I am going to stop making excuses. And I definitely relate to her in how she doesn't believe love is something that can happen to her, but I hope I am wrong. The book has a happy ending, and it is based on a real person. Next I'm going to read his book Brida.