Post 100

I cracked open a fortune cookie today to read the following inscription:

"You are free to invent your life."

It's fitting I suppose. Today I started my new, "real", full-time job at the University (as if my other jobs didn't really count, but nonetheless it will be nice to have a proper paycheck, an insurance card, and most importantly a valued role). My days and weeks and months are no longer determined by papers I must write simply to prove that I am thinking, or assignments prescribed by some other teacher. Before there was always an academic plan. Now more than ever it feels like I choose my path.*

*(Of course, mother nature has her little ways of weighing in and staking her own personal influence on all of our choices, as was clear by the terrific storm that blew through just as I made it home this afternoon.)

I spent the better part of the evening at a going away party for a friend who lives in a co-op. The place was filled with a few old faces too soon to be leaving town, and many many newcomers already there to take their places. For years I've helped pack boxes and load up trucks, always feeling sad that everyone seems to leave, to move on to some other place or in some other direction (if I'm lucky our routes will bend and curve, so we will meet again, from time to time). But that's life I suppose; even when it feels like we are standing still (whether we want to be or not), the world continues to move forward. I suppose by default we continue to move as well, even when forward feels questionable, or our paths uncertain.

So here I am at post 100; fitting that it should land today. Who knows where forward will take me. Working, cooking, reading, laughing, planning, running, talking, listening, loving, creating...

Life.

Let's see what's around the next bend in the road.