Fully Charged.

Yesterday I returned to San Francisco from my two week trip back home.  It was the first time I had been home since moving out here six months ago.  Reflecting on the two weeks I was filled with a mixture of paradoxical emotions...glad to be back in this city I now call home but already missing my family and friends...grateful to have made the trip but anxious and frustrated with how expensive it was...exhausted from traveling but energized and reaffirmed in my purpose out here.  Maybe it was jet-lag induced but I felt quite bipolar.  I knew before my trip that it would be difficult to see everyone and then leave them again, but sitting in my apartment 3,000 miles away, I realized that I am out here not just for myself, but for everyone I left back east.  Yes, I came here because I wanted a change, I wanted to become a better person, I wanted to live a more fulfilling life..but I also came here to make some sort of positive impact on this world.  I'm out here so that I can help make this world a better place for everyone, especially my family and friends...my nieces and nephews who will have to live in a world that we leave behind for them...a world that currently isn't looking that great.  Going home helped me realize this and it is what will keep me going while I'm out here.

I am so grateful for all the people I got to see and sorry for those I didn't.  Two weeks went by a lot quicker than I thought, and an unexpected case of mono required that I sleep and rest more than I would've liked to.  However, in spite of swollen tonsils the size of golf balls and feeling like an 80 year old woman for most of the trip, I have some amazing memories.  Happiness is indeed a choice and it is the most infectious and powerful state of mind we can choose to possess.  Thank you to all my friends in Boston, including the new ones, for helping me find that happiness in spite of not feeling well...Hooker, Chubby Bunny, Hef dancing, Left-eye Lopez attempting horseshoes, Brenna and Jo...and the seagulls, family week in ptown, campfire on the beach...the dancing of One-winged Jo and Boat-tips..."star gazing mothafuckas!"  To my family, I couldn't ask for a better one, thanks for everything.  Til next time...you guys rock.

"To choose life in this planet-time is a mighty adventure.  As people in all countries and walks of life are discovering, this adventure elicits more courage and enlivening solidarity than any military campaign...This multifaceted human activity on behalf of life may not make today's headlines or newscasts, but to our progeny it will matter more than anything else we do.  For if there is to be a livable world for those who come after us, it will be because we have managed to make the transition from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life-sustaining Society.  When people of the future look back at this historical moment, they will see, perhaps more clearly than we can now, how revolutionary it is.  They may well call it the time of the Great Turning."  -Joanna Macy & Molly Young Brown, "Coming Back to Life"