In Santa Cruz California...

As of today, I have a one way plane ticket to Hong Kong. I had an option to purchase a round trip ticket for essentially the same price, but opted for the one way. I did this because I know myself, and I know that if I have a departure date three months from when I arrive, I will start to structure my trip around that. Its safer, its makes more sense, and it is exactly what I don’t want. Not that I don’t want to be safe, it’s just that I don’t want the comfort and security of a plan b, c, and d. Simply put, I just don’t want plans. Anyways, my ticket is for June 7th at 1:20am. I arrive in Hong Kong at 6:45 in the morning. The trip will be extremely short by transpacific standards, only 14.5 hours.

Santa Cruz is getting a little weird. It wasn’t weird until I learned that a replacement had been found for my job. Troy, my former supervisor (and good friend) will be taking over my position as the Coordinator of Homeless Youth Services at the YMCA. When the last drop of responsibility to my program vanished, I realized I felt like I could let myself be taken care of again. It sounds weird, but when so many people depended on me for essential services and care, I turned off a part of myself that was vulnerable to the world. I see that I did this because there were so many intense things that happened to me over the last year and at no time was there a truly a stable support structure for me. There were great people, and things like self-care, but no structure that would allow me to collapse if things got too tough in both my professional and non-professional life. Really, I just had to know that things could never get “too tough”. Now I’m staying with my parents for a couple of weeks and I have the option to just act like a kid, be completely irresponsible (which I’ve never been very good at), and laze around. I can only wonder if it will effect my drive to set out on a crazy no-holds-barred adventure across the world. As silly as it is to say, I’m a little worried this may soften me up and make it harder to be alone on my trip.

Oh well. Things are funny. I hope everyone is doing fantastically well.

In Arcata California...

It's funny. I drove into Seattle two years ago with everything I owned in my car, and yesterday I left the same way. I don't know how to convey in words how much living in Seattle meant to me. Leaving was hard. I didn't get to say goodbye to a lot of people, and I didn't get to do a lot of things I had wanted to do. I really could have stayed for another month and not finished it all. I can't explain the urgency under which I left save to say that it was important to my emotional well being to start this adventure as soon as possible.

It wasn't until recently that I realized just how important my own happiness is, and that its greatest limiting factor has always been my fears. While I'm still afraid of the dark, Christian scientists, and mind control through fluoridation, I'm no longer afraid of the uncertainty of life. I find that this was the "keystone" fear that kept a number of my other fears in place such as those involving failure, confrontation, inadequacy, and run on sentences. Not being driven so intensely by fear has, I think, for the first time in my life, allowed me to listen to my own needs. There is a quote in the Confucian Analects (2.4) that says:

"At fifteen I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I had planted my feet upon firm ground. At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven. At sixty, I heard them with a docile ear. At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right."

While I don't believe that what I desire no longer oversteps the boundaries of right, I do believe that I may be following the dictates of my heart for the first time in my life. This is not to say that I regret any decisions in my life, it is just to say that I often ignore my needs out of duty, guilt, and stoicism. My recent work could have turned into this very easily, and I am very proud that I did not push down that path for the wrong reasons. I feel like I'm headed in the right direction, and I'm damn happy about it.

Next Stop Santa Cruz