Day 0

As I sat on the first plane of the first flight to Beijing (hour 6 or 7… or 82 they ran together pretty easily) my mind raced and I was suddenly hit with the urge to write down some of these thoughts. I grabbed the air sickness bag and began. The altitude decreasing the pressure in the cabin had caused my leaky faucet of a nose to drip drip drip with only tiny pieces of tissue to clean up and nothing to stop the cause. Doubts that don’t normally affect me continued to whisper incessantly in my ear: “Am I making the right decision?”, “Was this a mistake?”, “Am I scared?”.

For the first time in a long time besides thinking of my family I couldn’t help but think of my heart that I left in San Francisco (well, Alameda, but close enough). Realizing that it wasn’t just myself and my family being affected by my choice made it painfully obvious how many people I’d actually miss and worry about: My Williams crew ’07, ’08, ’09, Baby Streeters, My UGS 488, My Exie people. Crazy. So I needed to help them and myself make bonds that much stronger and release tension.

I had given up on writing for one reason or another, maybe it was too primitive in today’s age of handheld computers and tech advances, maybe because I can’t keep a journal for the life of me, or maybe because I’m afraid I might actually see everything; all my thoughts, good, bad, my confidence, my apprehensions, what drives me, as well as why I’m prone to bouts of uncaring laziness. Perhaps I’m not as much of an adult as I’d previously thought, or maybe in today’s society I’m as grown up as anyone else. Either way with such a change in my life it is my belief that though I am never alone thanks to my family and friends, I should give them, that is to say, you, another piece of me.