Holy shit, I live in a different city now.

Over 2000 miles away from all of my family and most of my friends. (Did you know that Google maps now offers walking directions? It's pretty humorous to scan through, especially the strings of nameless left and right turns. It looks like if I walked 24/7, it would only take 30 days and 21 hours to get home. . .)

I miss 'em. Quite a bit. I'd be missing 'em a heck of a lot more if it weren't for my brain-cancer causing cell phone. Maintaining connection over vast distance. Despite vast distance. While simultaneously figuring out how to become evermore present in what's going on right here. It seems to be a funny dance I'm doing now, a balancing act, on my toes, on the run. I'm very busy these days, and it's all interesting.

What's the plan? Become a competent human in nine months time, take what I've gathered back home and share the love? How nomadic of me.

In a big way, I'm moving directly towards everything I want for myself and for everyone around me, but in another way, I left everything I want behind. Cut myself off and away. Transplanted. Putting down roots here now, but not too deep! In limbo.

Or maybe I'm just akimbo, an elbow temporarily jutting out away from the body of my family. On a walkabout. A rite of passage. A coming into my own.


Whatever, I'm excited.

I'm amazed and so grateful to my family for making this adventure possible to me. I definitely recognize how blessed I am to not have to take a job to pay my way through this. I can give it the kind of focus that I used to give high school, but even more so, because this is not compulsory. Or, more aptly, it's less like high school and more like the immersive learning that children in indigenous cultures experience(d).

Actually, that leads in to the literal rejuvenation I am intentionally trying to cultivate- behaving more as a child, shedding the rigid seriousness of civilized adulthood in favor of light-hearted curiosity, playfulness, joy. I want to be adaptable- flexible, again. My current rattail hairdo harks back to my seven year old self for inspiration (I had a rattail in first grade as well). Now I like it when people call me Thomas, for the same reason.

I suppose it seems kind of contradictory to be rejuvenating and rite-of-passaging at the same time. I guess I need to move backward before I can move forward. If I must move linearly at all, that is.

Tis late. My sheepskins beckon.