No Place Like Home

How much has changed since that last posting! It is 3:37am on Sunday at Mike's house in Portland, Oregon. I am back home. I can't sleep. I have no job. I am nearly out of cash and credit.

I bolted from South Korea on Wednesday morning, leaving without notice, as advised by one of the current instructors at my assigned school. She said if I decided to leave, do it in the middle of the night. "The director is not a nice man."

I don't know what that means exactly. I just know I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I also had an unshakable urge to return to Portland. To see familiar faces. To speak English. To start over - again. Yet again.

There have been so many fresh starts in the last three years: divorce. Start over. Quit TV news. Start over. Quit radio advertising sales. Start over. Quit Korea. Start over.

But there also have been some refreshing constants - mostly my friends and family. I am eternally surprised by and grateful for their generosity. For this "start over," Coleen has opened her second bedroom to me indefinitely. Mike is letting me borrow his truck. Elena and Ryan have offered their spare wing if needed. With friends so generous, I wonder why I left to begin with.

Still, no regrets. My Asian invasion - Japan, Guam, Bali and Korea - was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I explored; I wrote; I photographed; I met new people; I learned. Now I know that I want to continue writing - not in the stilted TV news fashion that I had honed over seven years in the broadcast business, but in a way that fulfills my need to be expressive, bold and uncensored.

I will continue my Immersion blog. It will obviously need to be revised to match my environment and my situation in life. Stay tuned. There are always wild twists and turns in Jessica's wacky world - sometimes of my own making, sometimes not.