Home Away From Home

Daydreamer. As Adele plays on my ipod and the large hat coverd my face in an unusual way, protecting my sun obsessed self from the heat of this sunday afternoon in the beach i lose the will of just laying down still tanning the way i always do. Nothing that usual about this afternoon really. First, I am hiding my head from the sun, which, on its own, is already unusual given I have the strong belief I am constructed as a solar panel and the more sun I receive the happier I am and the more and better I function. And it is not only about sun accumulation, and hence the importance of always having my face turned to the sun. As I know what I am going back to in 24 hours I also feel the need to see remains of sun for the next 30 days that I will be in the island of rain. This is always the most sun focussed weekend of the year given it is the last bank holiday of the year and the last real weekend in the summer (that is assuming you have a summer). So having some colour on my face that dis...

Life has a way of reminding you happiness. Today, as I took my time to prepare the mass guide for the wedding, I suddenly became aware of the words I was reading and got to a still moment. I liked what I read. I liked that I will say them. And I wonder how I will feel at that point in time "for every day of my life". After reading it, you can't go on complaining about your day. It is just too good to be true!

I am back to writing, so it seems. Finally, these holiday, I put some time to just let my mind wonder and let the pen lead the way. It felt good I must say. One day I wrote with a purpose, another one with no idea. In the beginning I was even disciplined enough to make sure I would do a little bit every day. It clearly never works all the way throughout the holiday but at least the mind was open to wandering away and let out a bit of all this jam inside! With such a scenario, it is hard to be vague in thought!

Sometimes I feel like I am losing it. I just can't do all the things around me that need to get done, the move and stuff for the new house, the coming back to London, the reunions with old friends, the training, the studying and most of all the NGO things accumulate and I just seem not to be able to cope. I sleep worse every day, I am more tired when I woke up, tonight I even dreamt of FSA regulation. And my to do list keeps growing and I am the bottleneck in so many things. In fact, I am almost not being able to run a to do list anymore. Some days it is hard to see the light in the end of the tunnel, or shall I say the crosses all over the to do list. I don't know where to start, I have troubles prioritizing and I don't see how it can get better. We are too few for what we are doing and I am afraid sometimes it can all fall apart. I just had to let it out, I can't always keep the spirits up...

I fear I won't make it, I fear no one will understand, I fear to be different, I fear not to fit in. Being here brings us together and brings us apart. In a way I fear no one will ever understand what I go through, in another I fear I will never be able to explain. I trust the little gesture I do will make me whole and at the same time each departure makes me incomplete. I try to spend the most and the least amount of time here and with each person and I always feel it is not enough. I do the same when I go back home and I always feel I don't meet people's expectations. It could be that I do, it could be that they just expect too much or it could be that I just don't do enough. The hours and days are barely enough to accomplish all I feel I could. But they still pass by and they never wait. I try to accept that I will never have it all and choose the little things that make me happy. But it is more talk than anything else as the things that make us happy are never that ...

Today my post is for you, because you are so special, because I miss you so much, because life without taking off at 1 am to drive off town to meet you for one drink, beating rush hour to make it to the sunset and a carioca de limão, sleeping two hours after a night of chating away our hopes and dreams. Life without you is not the same and I wish I was there. Happy Birthday

...my sister Tania. It is her birthday today. She may not like it if I call her now (3.30am Lisbon time) so I will leave it here and hope that Diogo and Madalena fill her morning with happy birthday kisses! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

So I don’t really have much to say today but this blogging thing can get addictive, especially when people say that they actually read it. (I was astonished by that, by the way). I had a bad migraine two days ago, but it had a great effect! Once it was gone, my brain was in full speed (which truth be said has not been happening a lot the last couple of days). And so I decided that if you can’t sleep with the excitement of a project in your head for 3 hours, that can’t just be the drugs you took for the pain, it has to be more than that. So I am finally following Joana’s advice and putting the ideas to paper. She said she might even help me with it! So now I am in recruiting mode in Harvard for partners for the Business Plan competition. I promise a lot of fun and no clue on results!

So when is it that you decide what you want to be when you grow up? I remember that when I was a kid, I used to say "I want to own dad's company!". It was a pretty good dream as a start. I liked going around in the offices, talking to (or bugging) people, driving the machines around, picking up the phone in my super important voice… Sitting here at Harvard, amidst the rush of the cover letter deadline to send to the companies that I have not decided about yet, I wonder where all that went. Some say I grew up to be an over-achiever. Some say I was always on my way to come here. The truth may be found somewhere in between. So ok, I made it here. And so what? I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Or maybe I know some days, and I am just wondering what that means. If you are wondering what the only Industry Week that I attended was, it was Social Enterprise. For those of you that are not sure of what that is (as I was not as well), it includes non-profit organi...