'"Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but it's everything in between that makes it all worth living."

 
It's hard that endings and beginnings almost always come at the same time. The amount of trepidation I feel at starting new somewhere, combined with the loss of being done with something else feels uncomfortable, to say the least. 

But oh man, the in-between. The peaks and valleys. The figuring it out, the meeting new friends, and the finding new community, and reworking of my life. It is absolutely going to be overwhelmingly beautiful. And hard. But nothing worth doing hardly ever feels easy. '

That's a post I wrote after the AmeriCorps program I finished in 2012. It feels as accurate now as it did then. It's frustrating to know that this transition feels just as hard as that one, but oddly encouraging at the same time. Because after AmeriCorps I felt like I was losing both the people I adored and a job with purpose and value. I was worried I wouldn't make those same sort of connections again, but here I am again in that very same spot. And that tells me that I can and will be able to do it again. So despite the sadness I feel at leaving and the trepidation I feel at starting over, again, I also have hope and confidence this time both in my ability to surround myself with people who are nothing short of amazing and my ability to add meaning to this big beautiful globe with whatever I do. And that feels like a pretty okay place to start from. Deep breaths.