There are no detours

I'm working on making my sleeping schedule more regular. By working on it, I mean my mom is letting me have half of her sleeping pills. I don't intend to make it a habit, I am just taking them for now to get a better schedule.
The other night, I didn't fall asleep until almost 5 am. Since I've had a few other nights like that recently, I decided it was time to intervene.

Today I was talking to my mom about something that's been bouncing around in my head for a while. With this upcoming interview at the Japan consulate in SF, I am realizing that a belief I've had for some time really has a lot of truth to it.

It may seem like going from studying Japanese, living in Japan to studying international policy studies and development is a leap with very little connection between them, but I honestly don't believe that I've taken any detours to where I am now. Sure, I could have studied Global Studies in undergrad (instead I took just one class) and the subject matter would have been more closely related to what I studied at MIIS, but if I never lived in Japan I wouldn't have had the personal development experience I needed to decide that I wanted to go to graduate school and that I COULD pursue my interests in international studies that I harbored but never widely admitted I had. Going to Japan also widened my perspective and there is no doubt that my several visits to Hiroshima is what first got me on the path to Peace Studies (thus, ending up with Conflict Resolution as my concentration.)

I attended and graduated from MIIS thoroughly believing that there was little chance that my background with Japan would have any greater effect on my future career than that. I thought that maybe I would work for an NGO in Southeast Asia and if I had the opportunity to temporarily work with or be in communication with a Japanese NGO it would just be LUCK- nothing I should count on. It seemed like Japan and what I wanted to do with my graduate degree had loose connections, but I believed in them. I had no detours.

This upcoming interview opened my eyes. Maybe the connections between each step that I've taken are a lot clearer than I originally thought. If my Japan background and MIIS studies combine to create a job at the Consulate of Japan in San Francisco, next I might be able to grow in the field of Japan's international relationships. Then maybe Japan's international development activities? I don't know exactly how this can work, but it's a different path that I hadn't even thought of before. I could continue doing what I have been doing- collecting these experiences, bits of knowledge, and useful skills and eventually they will accumulate into something really great.

Something having to do with Japan AND International Development. How awesome would that be? 

(The only thing that would make it better is if I could still have close proximity to my family. :/)