Transitions - via the Hotel Imperial

First Breakfast not at the DFAC.

Not Kabul. 

After six weeks in Kabul, I needed a fabulous breakfast. This is what I got - at the incredible Imperial Hotel in Connaught Place.   The civility of this hotel after the chaos of Kabul was a bit jarring, but I always have needed to ease myself from one reality to another in order to manage all the change I face.

Whenever I leave a country, I need to stop somewhere else on the way, even for just a night, so I can process.  I don't think the mind was meant to switch country, time zone, language and job all in the same time - and with my job, sometimes that happens overnight.  So I have found ways over the years to make those transitions easier. 

When I left Florida to start working in Washington, D.C. at the State Department in 2001, I took the train instead of flying.  I was leaving behind my life in Gainesville, a life I loved, and a person I was crazy about. I couldn't stand the idea of just showing up in D.C. for a new job without taking a little time to ease out of Florida and into the next step.  So I took the overnight Amtrak from Florida to Virginia. It gave me 20 hours to slowly move away from what I knew into what was next.

Good place to think about what comes next.

I did the same thing when I moved from Bolivia to India in 2003. I went to Gainesville to touch base with one of my favorite places in the world (Gainesville always makes me feel more like my best self).  Then I took the train from there to start training in D.C. and think about Bolivia and what was coming next.   

 So coming out of Kabul, I like to go through India.  When I leave Buenos Aires, I like to stop in Florida and see my family. When I go back to DC, I stop in Gainesville.  I have all these places I am attached to now for various reasons, and I use them as anchors, and points along the way to help me make these crazy transitions.  And there are people who help too, people who knew me in Kabul, or India, or Gainesville, or Ft. Lauderdale, or maybe more during an important phase of my life that bridged many places.  But all of these things keep me connected.  It also makes me long for those places and people, but I focus on the connections.  Always focus on the connection.