Just the Beginning

Hello, and thank you so much for subscribing to my blog. I’m posting today as an introduction and explanation surrounding my upcoming year. Enjoy, and please comment!

During high school, I became very interested in global human rights, and I also became active with tutoring and mentoring kids in my community. Getting involved in projects surrounding these issues is where I realized how much I enjoyed putting time and effort into service.  This past February, I, like many of my classmates, was on the fast track to college. I’d done the visits, applied, picked a major, and I was even signed up for enrollment.  I always knew that when I “grew up” I wanted to help others, and I thought I needed to go directly to college to do that.  In the midst of all the winter college preparation, I felt unexplainably unsettled and unsure.

Then, one day, I found Global Citizen Year through a suggested page by Facebook. Before this day, I hadn’t taken the time to stop to think about the direction my life was going. I thought that going directly into college was all I needed to do to make sure I was on the path to success, but everything about the idea of taking a year off, to serve in a developing community, made sense to me. After I was accepted, I knew I had a life-altering choice to make by committing to the program or not, but the decision was actually very simple for a few reasons.

I realized how little I understood about the world around me, that I can’t even grasp how so much of the world lives, and that I have barely tasted what it means to serve. As people who get to share this planet of ours, I think we are all called to live compassionate lives, and to use the abilities, interests, strengths, and talents we have to make our community a better place. I’m very fortunate that I get to take this detour, for eight months, live a life that is unlike anything I’ve experienced, grow and develop my interests, serve in a developing community, and learn from the leaders of some amazing organizations.

I feel very fortunate that with much support, this crazy adventure gets to be the next chapter in my life story.  I know that this next year will bring discomfort and frustration, and will require enormous personal growth, but no matter where I am in life these are bound to follow. With so little time, and so much life to experience, constant comfort isn’t a place I want to live in.

Thank you for subscribing to my blog, and please feel free to comment. If you would like to donate online to help me before I leave in five weeks, click on the link below. Everything helps, but everyone who donates $25 will receive a postcard from me while in Ecuador!

http://globalcitizenyear.fundly.com/joshilyn-binkley