Herat Hooray!

Gosh what a cheesy post title.

Well to all of you who have been LIVING the past 4 days waiting for another rambling post, I am going to disappoint you. This one will be short, and will not cover anything historical about Herat (where I am, now), or Panjshir (where I was this past weekend). It will also not cover the interesting confluence of gays and Lebanese in my guesthouse (that is not to say that they are gay AND Lebanese, although there are a few), and it will not cover my resignation, yesterday, from my internship (except when I wax philosophical about internal mental trials). This post is just to get you to where I am, what I did (more or less) today, and alert you that tonight there will be some SERIOUS Herat and Panjshir blogging!

Mental Trials

When you are in the midst of stressful situations (usually those situations in which you are having some kind of conflict, be it professional or other), do you constantly replay in your head all the things that make you believe whatever point of view you have is the right one to support? I do this all the time: "Why it was wrong for me to leave NYC," "Why Bald Eagle never deserved me in the first place, even if I was immature about things," "Why my paper didn't suck" ... anyway, my method of coping with stress is to totally beat it to death by overthinking the situation to the point that the probability trees are slashed and burned to hell.

The reason I mention this is that for the past 24 hours, I have been coping (as some of my friends and family know) with a rather shocking and disappointing turn of events at work that it is not important to discuss here (or in any public setting, whatsoever). I just received an email that, in my view, affirms the validity of my decision to resign, and at the same time totally quiets (with the suddenness of an intravenous injection...actually I don't know what that feels like, but still...) all my anxiety about the situation. The trial in my head, where I am repeatedly and obsessively asserting the validity of my claim, has ended. It is wonderful in a situation like this (comparable only to the wonderfulness of a romance ending similarly) when I can walk away with everything I thought or said about the situation totally confirmed, case closed.

Just wanted to say that, because (not that I don't need to spend mental energy double-checking my position on this issue with work) I never articulated to myself, until today, this process I engage in of repeated mental trials, and I likewise never realized, until just now, that the real indicator of being "over" something is when these trials end.

Herat

I am in Herat.

The end.

Yeah right :)

I am too lazy, right now, to give you all the links and details you need, but I am in Herat safely, staying in a great UN guesthouse (thanks to an Italian friend whose efficiency is so violent that it rivals that of Dr. Wind Breaker [aka: Curie]), and have ALREADY:

* visited a famous mosque
* seduced a mullah (kidding, but I did meet one!)
* met some awesome and friendly people
* walked around more by myself in one day in Herat than I did in all my days in Kabul combined (in case I don't get around to blogging tonight and my mother FREAKS OUT reading that I was walking around alone: you can do that in Herat...even UN people can...it's *knocking on wood covered with ugly sharp glass that will be blogged about later* SAFE)

That doesn't sound like a lot, but it has been a full day...as you'll see when I blog later.

Ok everyone, cheers for now.

VC