I worked overseas and, as a result, have friends from all over the world. It started with a trickle last night, but since I woke up this morning, I have been deluged by calls, IMs, and emails celebrating the Obama victory and congratulating us on making the pick. More than any other election I've experienced, this one mattered deeply to everyone around the world and, finally, their faith and our faith in America was validated.

This is the kind of sports reporting I'd kill to see anywhere.

A friend and I were casually dating and considering taking it further, but she was a lot like the letter writer: from an immigrant family pushing her to go to medical school, success was defined by whether you were a doctor, lawyer, or engineer and anything else, and ultimately, she decided it wasn't worth the crap from her family to date a guy with ambitions of "I dunno, I want to write, I guess." So we parted ways amicably and stayed friends.

Eight years later, I have a very good, well-paying job in Europe that I've worked my way into by steady, reliable 9 to 5ing, and I still keep to 8 hours a day and keep my weekends sacrosanct as much as possible. This, after dropping out of college twice. And my friend still mutters to herself about how she could've grabbed me when she had the chance.

So the real question to me is "Is he really unambitious, or is work just not his life?" It could be that he just values something else like free time, friends, the ability to sit around in his underpants and watch sports on the weekend, collecting stamps, working out, whatever, rather than going to class or relentlessly striving for perfection.

You are a Striver and there's nothing wrong with that, but you can't stay with him if you don't respect him.

And I, too, have to fend off the urge to sit on my ass in front of the TV when the working day is done.

I'm lucky enough to live in a Scandinavian country with excellent public transit, and that's largely how I get around. So what I do is pay attention. I don't read on the bus or listen to an iPod on the train, no, I just look out the window. When I see an interesting looking neighborhood or shop or whatever, I make a little mental note of how to get there. Then, on the weekend, if the weather is nice, I make a point of going there and checking it out.

This was largely born out of necessity, since the only way I was going to find out where the grocery store was was to go out and find the damn grocery store. It took me roughly six months to begin to even get comfortable with finding my way around and doing "routine" things. It's only now, close to a year later, that going out to buy new shoes is something I do rather than being an epic adventure where I may wind up getting lost, and even still, I get excited when I find a new grocery store or hardware store or find a pharmacy closer to my flat than the one I'd been going to.

So I would say go out and find somewhere that looks interesting, somewhere you haven't been before. Even if you focus on useful stuff--I spent a week trying to find the right store to buy a network cable in--make a note of "fun stuff"--and in doing so, i found 2 new restaurants and a cafe I wanted to try--just keep your eye out and your ears open. If nothing else, you can do something else I do, which is to pick interesting sounding train/bus/tram stations, go there, and see what you can see.

Maybe they need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and start taking some personal responsibility. That's what they've been advocating all along, right?

I admit, my reaction was this: http://itsafraid.ytmnd.com/

I moved to Europe after a lifetime spent in the US.

I got an inkling things were different when I changed from the Very Serious US airline to the European one. When we needed to go to the bathroom, we formed an orderly line and stayed to one side of the aisle. When I was at the head of the line, the flight attendant and I chatted in a friendly way, rather than giving me the "Anyone around me could be a terrorist" evil eye.

Now that I fly out of a European airport, I put my bag on the belt for the X-Ray, put my metal things in a bowl to run through the X-Ray machine, and saunter through. The mood in the airport is one of "Yep, we're all here and we need to go somewhere" rather than "We're all going to die!"

I set off the metal detector in Amsterdam and the superpolite security officer took me aside, had me empty my pockets, asked(!) permission(!!) to pat me down, before seeing that I was no threat and sending me on my way.

I actually enjoy flying again.

I recently moved to Europe and, as part of that, I had to fly there. Two legs of my flight were on United, and you know what to expect there. The last leg of my flight was on BA, and it was like going back in time. Remember, for example, when you could just line up to go to the bathroom and not get shooed back to your seat, because only terrorists stand up in flight? Not only that, the flight attendants actually chatted with us in a casual way, rather than giving us the evil eye because a terrorist lurks around every economy class seat.

It really is a different world.