Driving home last night, I had a deluge of thoughts about being late-20s and trying to prep for the rest of my life. These included my parents getting old, both my parents being out of work, the strangeness of permanence of a place (driving on old roads I learned to drive on -- they're still there, even though I haven't been for years, it seems) --

My sister who wants to move back to where we were raised

The roads that I've driven in my youth and returned to in adulthood, and how the same concept applies to all the places that i've been -- that they haven't changed but that i have, and that you return to a place a different person, facing the things you once faced when you were so much less you (or a less dense culmination of time-you). the same is true for pittsburgh, london, san luis obispo, tomball. things change, but the roads...

this got me thinking about that old taoist idea that you can travel any distance sitting at home. that its not the place that a person goes, whether to escape or create a new life or perspective, but how they travel in their minds that bring wisdom.

i was feeling strange about being back in folsom after my strange life has led me other places. that i tried to change my "fate" so to speak (or should I call it casual habit, as so many people return to the area they were raised to live out their adult lives. Or god forbid, never leave in the first place --) but ended up back in the area anyway. driving on that same pavement.

Verse 26, from the Tao te Ching (always for Leanne)

The heavy is the root of the light.
The unmoved is the source of all movement.

Thus the Master travels all day
without leaving home.
However splendid the views,
she stays serenely in herself.

Why should the lord of the country
flit about like a fool?
If you let yourself be blown to and fro,
you lose touch with your root.
If you let restlessness move you,
you lose touch with who you are.

And I don't feel I'm losing touch with who I am, but that I envisioned so much more than this. for myself. that life has become so average with tv watching hours and coffee and work and computers and paying the bills. i am at the most stable point in my life i've ever been, and i feel unchallenged. i am not using my brain. i am not the old haley i used to be. or i AM that old haley, but i have more expectations of the real world -- i understand what to reasonably expect from the real world as well -- and i am bored. i am not "there," wherever there is. of course, who knows if I ever would be "there." Maybe only in hindsight.

i know the proportion of my exerted effort, when measured against my current station in life, align exactly. i know that if i want to feel stimulated mentally that i have to go get that. that i have to exert my own effort. it's not like school, where you go sit in a forum where mental stimulation is provided for you, if only you engage your brain. "turn on." there's not that stimulus around for me now. i did just subscribe to two feminist magazines, and bought a buddhist magazine. these things are good. clearly, i miss these things, so deeply ingrained in the root of the way i see the world. but buried under the daily-lifeness to the extent that i can't readily pull them up and articulate a formed thought on the subject -- or a tangentially relevant thought on another subject -- at all. so this is the current effort i will extend.

i know this also has to do with my master's program. [application, i should clarify]. i was talking with friends last night about that old chestnut, where does passion fit into your life. one of them, like konstantin's dad and like sari, thinks work is work and passion belongs in your personal life, as not to be corrupted by the interests of time, advancement, money, ambition, contracts, etc. i understand that, i really do. it's kind of like how i write for a magazine, and edit and do things with words, but the process is so inert and so corrupted that it really doesn't have anything to do with my passion for creative writing and english and literature. that's because those things that i really am passionate about involve thought, and my work does not. my other friend, however, and i were on the same page. we both want to work the dream. weave the passion by day, and have free time to chill or do nothing or what we choose. there's so much time spent idle at work -- 8+ hours a day -- how productive would we be if we were working on something we believed in? very. i know this from my past experience. that's what i want. that's all i ever wanted since i graduated from college and left the women's center. i so felt that my time there wasn't done, and that i was pushed out of my seat. dethroned/usurped. it was a coup of the nepotists. and that didn't work out, now did it. so ironic maya went to pitt, too.

and now pat is writing me a letter of rec. that's good.

is life always a struggle? i look at someone like jeff, who has his frustrations which are daily and far-reaching and broad, all of those, but he takes life so much easier. is it age? is it maturity? is it financial stability -- knowing everything will be ok? there is always that but i don't think its entirely relevant here. maybe he did all his worrying in his 20s and how he's on a path that he likes, and so he's ok. i've been on so many paths i liked for a while. the liking part always fades. then i have to pursue something new. what i try to tell myself lately is that people like barack obama and hilary clinton didn't get into a job and stay there. they weren't satisfied with some status quo position at a city magazine. they moved up certain ladders. i don't know their careers, but to get to a point where you're running for president, you have to have jumped around a lot career wise, and location wise. i try to tell myself that my ambition isn't so blind anymore, and that its actually a quest to lead a meaningful life where i have an outlet to give back to my community, however big that community is. that's part of it. i have so much more to give than this.

to be continued...