some guy in lebanon

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What a summer. What an extraordinary, incredible, lovely, indescribable summer. Hopefully not too-indescribable, or it would be hard to articulate it in this post…! And now it’s over, and tomorrow I get on a plane and fly back to Beirut. As my business partner Oni Kabir put it to me this evening, “It’s amazing how full circle things feel.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the past year – 365 days ago I was working at the Portland Lobster Company and gearing up to fly to Lebanon, with literally zero plan besides to intern at the Daily Star. I was also painting houses. Hey, don’t knock it – It paid the bills. But I was staring out into a future that I’d no idea how to envision – In 45 days I’d be getting on a plane for Beirut, praying that Nick would, in fact, be at the terminal to receive me (he was).

9 months later I returned to the United States for vacation, initially planning on being here for a 30 days. However, as my grandmother had major surgery over the winter and wouldn’t be in Maine until late August, it was important (and fantastic) to stay for another three weeks to see her. And so my return date morphed to September 11th (I didn’t choose the date).

So…. this is my first real post to satori redefined, and I think that it’d be fitting if I tried to recap in some detail what the past five months (five months!?!?) have been like in my life, and maybe sketch out what the next five months might look like. So, without further ado (and [...]