Different Worlds?

Twenty-nine days to go, to take off from here. This afternoon I received an SMS from my sister who said she was celebrating the fact that I'd touch down at Sahar Airport (I still cannot call it by it's new, utterly non-creative, name) exactly thirty days and five hours later. Made me want to celebrate too, but I was deep in the middle of work.

And a word of explanation about my absence: too much to do!!! This time I'm determined that I shouldn't take this world back into my home, and I've been working pretty hard so far to ensure it stays that way. The unfortunate thing I've realized is that I cannot get any of my other worlds into this world either. There's a wall there, pretty solid, can't converge this world with the ones outside. However much I try. When I go out on vacation, I'm Me. When I get back, I'm the boring, geeky grad student who stresses out at the drop of a hat. I feel the change as soon as I glimpse the city for the first moment after my brief flirtation with the "outside world". Yes, I look forward to the brief breaks I permit myself, but every minute of those breaks, I'm conscious of the fact that I'm going to have a worse time of it, the minute I walk back onto Chicago soil. Kinda taints the trip, but at least it leaves me more prepared. And call me pessimistic and all that, but even now, when I think of my vacation, my mind is already running the old Don't get too excited, it's only a break, you're coming back! routine.

Don't get me wrong. I love what I'm doing, I couldn't enjoy my research and my work more, and I'm intensely happy so long as I'm doing that. But, at the same time I know I used to have a far wider world beyond this, that, honestly, does not exist in Chicago. At least, in the past, I didn't feel guilty not working for a while. Now I do, even if I deserve the break.

I received an email from a really close friend yesterday. (Thank you, S. You made my day!) Apparently he'd gotten through the latest Happy Rotter (no, that's intentional, that's what I call The Boy Who Lived With A Scar On His Forehead) and was talking about how much more "grown-up" it seemed as compared to the previous ones (Of course, I agree). And then, in his mail came the question I've been asking myself for such a long while now: Have we grown up already?? And with the multiple question-marks, too.

Yes, we have. I only wish it was a simpler world to grow up into.

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P.S. The world seems more a la Dickens than it did when I read him as a child. Talking of which, I had a rather animated conversation (on email) with an old friend a couple of weeks ago, and she was in the middle of Oliver Twist. Made me remember Dickens so much, I walked out to the library and picked up A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations immediately. Read them years ago, over and over, and man!, even now Dickens does not grow old. But, on the other hand, no wonder the temporary despondency. Aaargghh!! I need to open up my 'Bible' again, i.e., the worn-out copy of Atlas Shrugged sitting right here. And S., by the sound of it, you need to get back to it once more, too!