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A week ago, I left behind five years in Los Angeles, having fulfilled my educational obligations there. I began those five years passively, with many excuses and few positive reasons as to why I had come to that specific place at that time. My continued passivity soon threw me into crisis, as my seemingly concrete foundation became softer than a peat bog. To continue, I needed to learn to actively learn and practice a wealth of activities, as every child does joyfully until the horrific boredom of institutionalized education destroys the innate love of learning which we are all born with. As I once again became active in the world, I made up for lost years by committing to the planting of many seeds at once. This intense cultivation often caused me to become overwhelmed or lose focus, yearning for fallow periods as does intensely cultivated soil.

I have spent the last week tracing those roots back to the North. After many goodbyes in Los Angeles last weekend, I spent one last Tuesday night in Long Beach sipping beer on the beach discussing radical politics and movement-building. I headed to my mother's house in Gilroy the next day only to watch Thursday's stunning panoramic sunset from Christmas Hill Park with Pam and Babken, who surprised me by coming down to my hometown to crash on their way back from the Bay.

Tonight, after wishing Maddie and a group of Treehouse folks adieu after a good weekend in the City, I have set up with my laptop on the roof of Euclid Co-op in Berkeley to again watch the sunset. I'm staying here with my friend Kaitlyn for a couple weeks while I work on some graphic design projects and scope out the area to move here in the fall. While sitting here I've joined folks in yoga on the rooftop, as well as a twilight hookah + pita session, watching the stars and chilling with friendly new faces.

I'm also already beginning to rekindle old connections here, and I have no doubt that I've made the right active decision to move on from quarter-life-crisis mode and into a more relaxed period for nourishing the seeds I've planted over the past two years. I have a hunch that living here is going to really transform me in a positive way.

(In hippie-dippie news, Mercury is out of retrograde, Jupiter is up high in the sky, and the moon is exactly opposite to it was two years ago when I started traveling. And according to the Abounding River game at Cafe Gratitude on Shattuck, I am all that is flourishing, and I am effervescent.)