We're progressing beautifully.

Recently I was in Washington DC visiting my sister during what will probably be the final spring break of my academic career. Let's just pause for a moment in reflection and admiration for this fine vacation, shall we? Because every year, spring break saves my sanity and gives me that final jolt of energy to send me sailing towards the finish line. Rest in peace, spring break. While I never got drunk with you in Panama or arrested with you in Cancun, you sure were good to me.

Anyhow, during the day while my sister worked, my friend Rebecca and I toured the capitol, running around to all the obligatory monuments and memorials that were free and crowded by eighth graders. Meanwhile, the cherry blossoms in the city were literally blooming right before us. In the morning, they were still just tight buds hanging from the trees but almost magically by afternoon they had opened up into beautiful flowers. Everywhere you looked, trees were blossoming.

As someone who is always in search of a good analogy (and bad ones too, I'll admit), I found it particularly fitting that all this rapid-fire change was going on the same time that me and the people I care about were experiencing our own metamorphoses. It seems like every time I answer my phone or check my email nowadays, I hear about friends who are getting engaged, finding jobs, moving to new cities, or starting school again. As someone in the middle of her own job search, I'm finally about to embark on my great adult adventure. It's three parts excitement plus one part nausea. Change is in the air.

Today's joie de vivre is that good ol' friend called progress. We're all just a bunch of cherry blossoms, after all, opening up and spreading out. It's frusturating while we're still waiting to blossom, and we question whether it will ever happen. But eventually, we all come into our own in some way, shape, or form. So let's just embrace the whole experience and pat ourselves on the back for being so gosh darn pretty in the process.