Circle Game
It feels good to be back among friends, but it's slightly strange to settle back into a way of life that's both very familiar and yet something from "another era" of my life. What I wrote in Montana, that feeling that I was "finished" with school and didn't need, emotionally, to return to it still holds true. Going to the UO no longer seems that important to me-- it's part of the experience but it isn't my psychological priority. I'm here to enjoy the Now, whether classes are a part of that or not.

This year will be much different than the other three I've spent here. The ten months I spent in Tokyo are a prominent rift between "now" and "then," a clear physical representation of the changes I've undergone. I'm very much NOT the same person I was the September before my 21st birthday, and even more so, quite different from who I was the September before that.

Yet here I am again, in the same office I was in the fall of my Freshman year, still friends with the same people. That's a good thing... so is the change, a very good thing. I've already proved to myself that I can still feel quite awkward-- through a series of chance encounters and social mishaps-- but I'm no longer afraid. I've gained a tremendous amount of perspective, courage, and confidence. I no longer feel like a ghost in my own life.

And so, even though I've returned to a previous point, when I felt like I should be moving outward on a line, it's more a spiral path than a circular one that I'm on-- evolving outward toward an unknown end.

This afternoon I head down to San Francisco for the weekend for Folsom Street Fair, quite unsure what I'm getting myself into. Whatever happens, there will be pictures, and maybe even a weekend post. Stay tuned.