Time flies when you're having fun. Time flies when you're not having fun. Time flies while you dare to think about the possibility of having fun. It even flies when the last thing on your mind is thinking about whether or not fun has anything to do with Time's flying. For the past few weeks, I have been waking up to the same thought: “Just yesterday, it was the beginning of summer.” The thought that summer is more or less over and that that means I'm about to embark upon my second year in my degree programme/in my new life- is frightening and exciting.

It's completely sunk in now that I've made yet another decision (returning to school) that will change my life forever. That's frightening. I have also realized that whatever becomes of me because of this decision, there would be absolutely no regrets or “what-ifs” lurking in my mind 5-10 years later. I'll emerge at the end of this a different person. A better person. That's exciting.

It truly does seem as if it was just yesterday that I was doing restrained mental cartwheels at having survived my first academic year. Indeed, it still feels as if it was just the day before yesterday that I'd left the “working world”. Well, no. That isn't true. At this point, it feels like ages and ages since I was last working as a reporter- freelance or contract.

I remember when I first arrived here, I walked around wrapped up in a blanket of relief. Every now and then, I'd smirk to myself and count myself lucky to have escaped, if only temporarily, the pettiness that can plague the field I was in particularly, and small island society, in general. Every now and then, the faces and voices of various media workers would haunt me. In all of my arrogance, I'd wonder just how these workers (or anyone) could live with themselves living like that.

Then it hit. I began missing work, not like crazy, but somewhere in the vicinity of semi-crazy. I tried convincing myself (and others) that what I really missed was having a salary. But that wasn't it at all. I was homesick. And not homesick in the “I-miss-my-family-the-island-the-sun-the-friendliness/familiarity-of-the-people-the-way-that-one-traffic-light/road-hasn't-been-fixed-since-Noah-built-the-ark-and-etc” kind of way. I was intent on keeping up with all that was happening back home. And lots of what was happening back home was making me sick. Lots of it was making me question what I really knew about anything, particularly how to go about effecting change. I was back to questioning whether or not I had done the right thing leaving.

Then of course, there was also home-sickness in the usual sense. I'd long forgotten that sinking feeling and widening gap that can plague when you're away from family and friends. You see (or hear really) of so many things that they are enjoying or hating. Without you. Birthdays. New foes. Graduations. Births. Their feelings that a particular person will/will never get what's coming to them...new jobs...new “insider jokes” being formed. All without you. There's only so much you or they can do to keep you from missing out on certain tiny but important pieces of their lives altogether. And you hate the fact that time is flying for them. But you'll also be returning soon. And so you like the fact that time flies for you.

Time flies- whether or not you're having fun. And that's good. And that's bad.

Next in Journal of a Working Girl: #48 The Roads Taken

(Journal of a Working Girl will now be regularly updated monthly.)