surreal

If you had told me just over a month ago that I would be moving to Baltimore and working at Johns Hopkins, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had told me even a few days ago that I would be having lunch at the White House and going to a Rose Garden ceremony, I definitely wouldn’t have believed you. But, as I’ve learned again recently, when things “fall into place,” they can do so rather quickly, and all of the above actually did come true.

And here I am, at the end of perhaps one of the most surreal days of my life, knowing that though I’m utterly exhausted, I absolutely had to write about it. So, how do I retrace the steps that led me to the White House lawn today? The short version is as follows:

One of my friends that worked with me in Indonesia took a job with Johns Hopkins right after leaving Banda Aceh. In early May, she invited me to her office where I met the communications person working on her program, who in turn told me all about the communications center at Hopkins and all the cool work they do. Since its all health based (as opposed to disaster relief), I really hadn’t heard of it before but was intrigued. They had no open positions to speak of, but we had a nice chat.

Two days later, she called me and said that a colleague had just announced she was leaving. That colleague called me the very next day, and I soon found myself in a fast forward interview process for an amazing, yet highly unexpected, job opportunity.

Long story short, I am now Director of Advocacy for Johns Hopkins global malaria prevention programs. I have moved to Baltimore into a great new apartment, and today, on Day 6 on the job, I found myself at the White House, listening attentively as George and Laura championed the cause for which I’m now advocating – a preventable, treatable disease that kills a child in Africa ever 30 seconds. Yep, that’s about a million people per year.

It was a surreal day, though almost typical of the whirlwind my life has become in the past few weeks – interviewing, weighing options (overseas vs. U.S. work), accepting the job, finding a place to live in a city I knew relatively little about, moving all my stuff from Virginia Beach in a U-haul the size of a school bus… and that’s far from everything. As you can imagine, it’s all been quite hectic and exhausting, yet exhilarating and surreal (there’s that word again).

But just so you know that I’m keeping it real and am far from getting caught up in anything (other than tripping over the boxes that line every inch of my new abode), I’ll share this snippet of my day…

I left late (of course) this morning to meet my new boss and catch the early train to D.C. and found myself sprinting (ah, the familiar dash) to the station in heels and a suit to make it on time. Which I did. But to my horror, as I collapsed into the seat and reached toward my backpack to get out my make-up and powder my spritzing face, I realized that I left my make-up bag IN THE CAR! Click click click goes the train, carrying me further and further away from my mascara and concealer. I’m going to the White House and don’t have on a drop of make-up. Any woman understands how mortified I was at that moment, but from somewhere deep, deep inside, that same Sense of Knowing emerged that led me to this point in the first place… Bonnie, it’s going to be ok.

And with that, I accepted that George, Laura, my new boss and all these new faces that I was destined to meet today would be getting their first glimpse of me a la natural… And I was somehow totally ok with it. So, off I went… to the fancy PR firm, to the White House, to the Congressional testimony, to the reception we hosted afterwards, meeting all these people, new colleagues, congressmen, “important” folks and such.... Nice suit, great top, and no make-up…

And it was a fantastic day.