My two-year anniversary with Los Angeles approaches. Living here was an experiment, drawn out on cocktail napkins and e-mails before throwing my life into a car and arriving with no job, no apartment, and no clue. And as much as there is to love about LA, looking around at the trappings of my life, it’s obvious I never thought of it as more than an experiment.
My car still boasts New York license plates.
The fixtures of home consists of a desk and white board from Staples, a chair purchased from a suspicious Ukrainian woman I met via Craig’s List, and a hanging cubicle thing I bought from Target.
I don’t own anything that indicates I’m here to stay, like a dresser. Or a rice cooker.
Plenty of things I didn’t enjoy about this experiment, too, things I romanticized as part of the “great adventure” of it all, but in reality, just sucks:
I thought starting over, with no network of friends and family would be empowering. It’s not. Mostly it’s lonely.
I thought freeing myself of obligations to write full time would make me productive. So far it’s only made me poor.
I thought it was fun being the new guy: fresh-faced, armed with plenty of gumption to tackle the biz. And it was, for a minute.
Now, I’d rather be the guy with gumption who’s got his shit on lockdown.
I’m not there yet, and as I realized how badly I wanted to get to that level, I’d driven away any feelings of “this is an experiment.” It stopped being an experiment, and just became life.
This isn’t to say I’ll stay in Los Angeles forever, or that next year I won’t discover a new opportunity. For now though, my heart and mind are focused here.
Maybe it’s time to buy a dresser.
But the New York license plates, those I’m keeping.
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Photo Credit: Anthony Kernich
