I sent in my resume to Virgin America. I am also looking at usajobs.gov for national park jobs. They are hiring park rangers at the GS4 level (I am currently a GS3) which with my anthropology degree, I am eligible. I am also looking at Americorps... that is another thing I thought about doing if I ever had money saved up, which I do now. After you participate in Americorps you get an education stipend and it really helps you to get a federal job in the parks. I'd love to be an FA again and travel to all the places I haven't yet, but I also want to be a park ranger. I really can't see myself doing one thing forever.

I was in line at Subway, I obviously eat there a lot, and I realized why I wanted to have kids before and now I don't. The woman in front of me was ordering a kid's sandwich with only cheese. The way she ordered it, she sounded like she felt she was important and her kid was important. That's when I had the moment of realization. I wanted kids so I felt like I was contributing something important in my life. Getting married and having kids to feel accomplished instead of me taking risks and fighting for my goals; such a cowards way out. It so fits with the way I was when I met Alan; I was wanting to do all these great things but I thought I would fail. Over the past three years, I have stopped being so afraid of failure. Mostly because I have failed a lot and for the most part, the ride is always fun in the end. For example, I will never regret coming here to Alaska and getting married. It helped me to realize a lot of things about myself and the life I should be leading instead of the one I felt I was supposed to lead. Like Maria, I had let life choose my path. And I will never forget how beautiful the Aurora is; nothing else in nature can compare to a night when the Aurora is burning across the sky.

I am reading Brida by Paulo Coelho. In the book, there is the idea that everyone has soulmates, which are created when the soul divides when we die and we search in life to find them. In part of the book, Brida goes into a trance and sees herself in her own mind where she sees a library of dusty books. She opens one to see it contains memories of one of her past lives that she had no idea were there. I thought about this visual in relation to self awareness. Like I have this library inside my head and some of the books are dusty because while I have the knowledge, I haven't accessed it yet or I don't know how. That the true reason I had felt I wanted kids, and the truth that the future I really want has no room for children, was there in my mind the whole time. But I didn't find the book with that knowledge until now. The mind is such a strange and fascinating thing; we can hide things even from ourselves within it.