I have a new life now, and it's not in LA--most of the time. As such, this domain isn't jiving anymore, and I've got a new one:

www.onbeingetc.blogspot.com

Til then.

I’ve been back East for a month, nearly. I had to look up the dates; time has concurrently flown by and crawled and because of it I don’t know midnight from noon or Saturday from Tuesday. Not things to be proud of, I know.

The first weeks back were the lamest, by far. I would use the guise of jet lag to sleep until 1 or 2 p.m., swapping my bed for the couch to watch Law & Order and Lifetime movies. I wasn’t all sloth—I’d take the dog out a few times in there, get dressed in time for mom to come home from work. I’d help with dinner and head upstairs for a nap, where I’d stay up until 4 a.m. looking for jobs online, book-marking many and applying for none. Eventually I would give up and fall asleep with all the lights on. Wake, repeat. It was disgusting.

So I jumped ship. I caught a ride to Charlottesville, arriving in the middle of the night during birthday festivities. I stayed three days, checking in with all of my favorite people. Yes, they all still were breathing fine, ticking along. And check, my life there was gone. Glad that was settled. In my head—paradise. In reality—get me out of here, it’s been played. I said my hellos, skipped the goodbyes and headed north.

After a night in DC, I hopped a bus to NYC. When I was in LA, I was sure that New York was where I really wanted to be, my “ideal.” New York is fantastic, fabulous, lovely. I spent my days wandering around the city by myself and my nights with good friends. I wish I could say I did a lot of soul searching when I traipsed around the city, but I didn’t. Frankly I don’t know what I thought about. I looked at people’s faces. Enjoyed the nice weather and the grand old buildings. Got lost. Not a bad way to spend free time. Not productive, but not necessarily counter-productive.

This morning I woke up and came home. A young woman of questionable decisiveness comes of age, take three.

It was one week, yesterday, since I arrived in Virginia, and I have yet to unpack. My suitcases are no longer full, to be certain, but my clothes, books—the possessions that I deemed important enough not to leave behind in the huge bags that went to the goodwill—are strewn around the room, wrinkled, dirty, piled high. My room sits just at the top of the stairs, and my mother says the mess is making her crazy and that I must remedy it. I’d like to. Really, I would. But somehow packing those clothes away into drawers means I’m staying for the long haul, and I am just not ready to accept that yet. Certainly, clothes in drawers are no contract, no precursor for signing one’s life away. But when I’m transient, I act it, and don’t pretend to set-up “home away from home” by folding my clothes and arranging my things in nice little piles; I never use the drawers in hotels. Granted my house here is less a hotel than home primo, but really, at this point, out of college, I want it to be a stopping point, not a final destination. And even though all parties agree that I am only here until I regroup and get a job somewhere else, the fact that this could be months from now makes me a little bit crazy, and a little bit scared.

Tonight at dinner there was a showdown: mom and dad think I am disrespecting the way they run things (I am), and are offended by what they perceive as ingratitude about staying here (it is). It’s true: I don’t want to be here. But I have no money, no job, and no health insurance, so this has to be the place, at least for awhile. I am having a revelation here. I am living at home out of necessity, not because I am lame. And this doesn’t have to be a horrible thing: it offers things like free food, a bed, a puppy, and medical care should I have an accident while eating chocolate-covered almonds. And, though I hate, hate, hate to admit it, it offers another chance to hang with my parents, and to learn from them, because it seems that maybe, at least sometimes, they are right.

I didn’t end up going to NYC, but stayed the weekend in Northern Virginia with an old friend. A lot of quality television and bad football was watched during the day while at night we went out and met up with friends from school who are now saving the world—or making a fortune—in DC. Was somewhat the antithesis of a weekend I would have had in LA: I recognized people wherever we went (and because I knew them, not because they once guest-starred on Felicity or similar) and it rained—nay, poured—all weekend.

I walked around the city by myself on Friday in the rain, and decided whatever dreams I had for public transportation and walking were ridiculous and convoluted and that I really have no interest in ever taking a metro ever, ever again. And that walking is nice until it’s pouring and you’re soaked. I went to the Museum of the American Indian but promptly left when I remembered that I don’t have the attention span for museums.

Anyway, weekend was fun and fine, and I don’t think I want to live in DC, though I didn’t think I wanted to live in DC before this weekend, so really, as far as developing life plans, etc. this weekend was pointless.

This week I will: Apply for a lot of jobs. In a lot of cities. And a lot of fields. And if I get one, I will know that all this time I really just wanted that job, in that place. Yes. So this is the plan.

Am home. First night was all, um, I’ve made a huge mistake. But now has been some days and I’m happy to be here in my lovely, (relatively) clean city with family and puppy and, perhaps most notably, bed.

Have spent past few days waking late, watching movies on TV, and half-heartedly searching for jobs in as-of-yet-undetermined fields and locales. Tonight I met a friend for coffee. She is in grad school and is getting married. We’re in very different places, obviously, but she is good evidence that there are indeed creatures my age who are adults.

While she is on track, I have brought my chronic state of indecision down to the most micro level, forgoing meals for not knowing whether I prefer soup or PBJ, going barefoot because there is no real winner between flip-flops and slippers. I’m about to stay home this weekend and watch more marathons of Law and Order, etc. if I don’t get my act together and figure out what I want to do. The initial plan was to take home-friend group trip to NYC this weekend, but as various participants had to drop-out due to collegial obligations (pshaw), groupness of group-trip was suspended. I told my friend in the city that I was going to come anyway; then reneged due to laziness in face of the journey; then flopped again and said would come; then chose just to go to DC, not NYC; then decided, yes, shall go to NYC; then read of bomb threat and decided against trip; then realized if I didn’t go for that reason, terrorists had won, so now I am bloody going.

So. Goals of trip are:

1. Catch-up with old friend


2. Have fun/be active/get out of daytime-TV-watching funk


3. Connive friend into providing analysis of my talents, perhaps also my goals, perfect career, etc


4. Not get blown up


5. Eat a cupcake from Magnolia Bakery

This is, of course, assuming I don’t change my mind again by morning. And this isn’t just a cute ending, because I probably will.

Soon after discovering I wanted nothing to do with movies and television except to watch and talk smack about them, I accepted that there was little reason for me to stay here. Certainly I have lovely friends here, but just as friends couldn’t be reason enough to hang around home after grad, they cannot be reason enough to stay here.

When one dreams of writing screenplays or acting on camera, it’s easy to justify retail jobs and sleeping on the floor. But when one has no such dreams, if one has about as much an idea about the direction they want to take as they did when five years old, then perhaps LA isn’t the place to be finding oneself. Certainly, there are lots of opportunities here. But there is also lots of ugliness, lots of sprawl, and lots and lots of city. It is whelming.

So. I have sold my car. And finished up my work at the store. And given notice at my internship. And, once again, bought a one-way plane ticket. And maybe not quite as spontaneously as I decided to come out here, I have decided head back.

When one lives in Los Angeles, one inevitably spends a lot of time in transit. This is an unfortunate aspect of life in a city of sprawl, but it has its perks. Whether walking (which no one does, by the way. I used to walk to work from my old place in Hollywood, a 30 minute walk, and people were incredulous), driving, or bussing, time rather stops during the journey from point A to point B. I spend my transit time thinking about the city, which is interesting since I spend most of my other time—while working, eating, laughing, sleeping—thinking about whether or not to leave it. But while in transit—these days, in the car—I reflect on LA a lot. Mostly with how huge it is, but also how full of possibility it is.

There is a lot of room for dreams in this city. Certainly, there are the big ones—those who want to make their money and their fame making movies and music, but for every kid with stars in her eyes is one who is here to make a life. I haven’t figured out my dream LA scenario yet, but I like to try them on. Am I Canyon girl, hiking down to market for a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine? A West Hollywood groupie, spending my evenings on the sidewalk cafes of the center of the queer community in LA? A lazy Santa Monican, jogging on the beach and enjoying heaping brunches on Main Street? Or am I a Valley girl, embracing the relative peace and quiet and easy living of life over the mountain? Or might I be more at home in Silverlake with the cool kids and hipsters? Or in Westwood, the artificial college town that UCLA calls home? None of the above is the real answer, but somehow in LA, a choice must be made. Each neighborhood is different, and the city is so large and traffic so bad, that adopting multiple neighborhoods seems logistically impossible. Right now I have no home base. Valley doesn’t quite fit, but Hollywood wasn’t perfect either. I like Westwood, but don’t feel at home there. Santa Monica is nice, but too far away from everyone else. And Silverlake’s hipsters—not my style. In the car, driving through these different neighborhoods, I can picture myself in all of them, and yet picture myself in none of them. So instead of choosing, I live the scenarios in my head and put off decisions until later. Which really is why I’m still sleeping on the floor. I would move, but moving requires picking a neighborhood, and picking a neighborhood requires picking an identity—and right now, that’s out of the question. I’ll drive around and think about it. In which direction is anyone’s guess.