Hanging up the backpack :(

It's been a long time since I've posted.  It's been just over 1 year since I arrived home in Vancouver on what was supposed to be a temporary "healing" visit.  My knee is for the most part better now though I suspect I won't do some activities with the same level of vigor anymore. 
On the travel front I have accomplished nothing.  Been nowhere this year and have nothing at all to report on that front.  Just dreams and ideas....
I had been applying for acceptance into training in air traffic control.  I still can't say exactly why I finally applied for it or exactly what the main attraction is for me but somehow the choice just felt right.  Getting accepted was my focus for first half of my stay with the testing and interviews and stressful waiting.  Then I did pass and get accepted and was told to wait for a training offer.  Knowing only that that offer would be coming sometime within the following 18 months, I did the practical thing and got a temporary job driving a school bus. 
Have I mentioned how much I like driving a school bus?  It's so much better than driving my car.  Vancouver traffic is ridiculous by the way, but driving is easy enough for me, so when summer rolled around I got another job driving vans of foreign exchange students from the airport to their home-stay families around town.  So I rediscovered my workaholic mode, that had been lying dormant inside me for a while.  I had all of 2 days off through the whole summer.  But it was ok because was fun to relive the old tour days and meet foreign students and this time being able to tell most of them that I'd been to their country....
I then started tentatively planning my next trip but recently got "the call" and training offer.  Normally they give you 4-5 months notice but in my case I got only 2.  So I am now finishing up some of the application procedures (medical and background checks) and self-studying the material they've sent for us to prepare with.  I start my training Oct 15th.  I will be studying the VFR (visual flight rules) stream, to ultimately end up in an airport tower.  I am freaked out as it will be very intense and stressful and I'm feeling a little rusty on the study front.  But it's also exciting to be starting a new phase of life as well. 
The hardest part is having to accept that I won't be travelling again for a while, and certainly not the way that I had been before.  I know I can't complain because it has been an amazing experience that few ever get to have.  But it played such an important part in making me who I am, the better parts of who I am, that it feels like a betrayal to be finally admitting that it's time to hang up the backpack for a while and put my major focus elsewhere for a while.  I'm not done travelling by a long shot, there is still a ton I want to see and do, so I'll keep you posted if anything else interesting comes up.  In the meantime, if you aren't already doing it, I encourage everyone else to get out there and travel.  Go on, make me jealous.  The world is an amazing place...
Ammon