Stateside

It's about 11:30 AM here in Newburyport, MA and I'm enjoying my last few hours of "home" for awhile. It's been good to be back. It's been refreshing.

And I don't want to leave.

Soon enough, I'll be heading down to Boston and the fun of an international flight out of lovely Logan. Back to Europe. Back to the rain, the cold, and the boredom of Ireland.

No, I really don't want to leave.

In some ways, it's kind of strange, really. I never knew how much I enjoyed living in the states until I didn't live here anymore. I guess that's always the case, but still, it's always interesting to have that hammered home.

I spent a good portion of the week with family and friends I haven't seen in months. It was great to catch up and to feel like I was part of their lives again. To see how their kids have grown. The changes they've made to their homes. Their physiques. Everything.

Of course, each conversation turned back to me at some point. More specifically, the conversations turned back to my future. "How long are you staying in Dublin?" "What are you going to do?" "What do you want to do?" "Where do you want to live?" Good questions all. Now, if I just had the answers.

In truth, about the only question I can answer with any sort of certainty is the first one. At this point, I'm figuring my expat days are winding down. Not soon, but probably within the year. My current contract still has some life left in it and we'll see what kind of offer I get - if I get any at all - to extend. My guess is that I'll be offered an opportunity to stay on, but honestly, I don't know that I'd accept. It's not that I don't like my job or the people I work with. I do. It's just that I really don't like Dublin.

When all is said and done, my guess is that my desire to return home will trump my desire to keep doing what I'm doing. It's sad, in some respects, but that's the hard truth of the matter.

I'm not necessarily one to do a lot of soul searching or planning about my future. I know what I like to do. I generally know what I want to do, and I sort of let things lead me where they will. After grad school, I ended up with an amazing gig at CBS News in New York at the ripe old age of 24. Nearly six years later, the call of the West led me to walk away from the news room for the last time with nothing more than some savings and a plan to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.

That didn't work out, but somewhere along the way, I made my way to Silicon Valley and fell into the high-tech world. After some time in the consulting world and at a few failed start-ups, I landed in the comforting arms of Intuit where I put my varied background to work on Quicken.com until the Internet bubble burst and my job vanished into the ether. So it goes.

After making my way back to LA and losing a year to illness, I found myself selling Mini Coopers to make ends meet. Sure, it's not the gig I planned on or hoped for, but I love cars and it was paying the bills until something better came along. Which it did. Out of the blue.

A phone call and a few interviews later, I found myself writing again. About poker, which is something I love. With a group of really bright and dedicated people who want nothing more than to create the best online poker site anywhere.

Now, I'm planning on returning to Ireland, which is somewhere I never expected to live. Sure, I'm not thrilled about the trip, but the fact that I'm heading back to the Emerald Isle is sort of amusing to me since I never had any thoughts of living there in the first place. Like I said, I don't really plan. I just let life take me where it will.

Where will it take me next? Aside from back to the United States, I have no idea. Check this space over the next few months and maybe we'll figure that out together.