Los Angeles, CA

For the longest time I was sure I wouldn't like LA. I'm not sure why--I think I thought it would be full of hippies and freaky people with no work ethic. But I've completely and totally fallen in love with LA. I guess I failed to take into account that I myself am a freaky person with no work ethic.

In a weird way, liking LA so much makes me more excited and more ready to move to southern California. It's about 100 miles between San Diego and LA, so I'm not contemplating moving to LA and dating in San Diego or anything like that. But if things go south, I could move to LA and pick up the pieces without having to worry about moving all the way back to New York. Plus the restaurants/nightlife/cultural options are close enough to take advantage of them on the weekends.

I've been through a lot of cities with no character. You all know the sort of cities I mean--there are buildings, and businesses, and people, and some suburbs, but the city lacks any identifiable soul. To quote Gertrude Stein, there's no there, there. That was always part of my problem with America ("America" as opposed to "New York"--because we all know New York is not actually a part of America, and vice versa). I couldn't understand how so many people could live in places that were so...boring. That was part of the reason for this road trip--to break out of the New York bubble and see what the rest of the country was like, before I lived in New York too long to actually relate to it. But LA had an immediate and very identifiable soul. Even driving through it at 8 am on a Sunday, when no one else was around, I could feel the energy. It made me want to leap out of the car and run around the streets meeting people.

I checked into my hostel, two blocks from the Santa Monica beach, and then gave myself a driving tour of LA. Down Santa Monica Boulevard to Sunset Boulevard and the Sunset Strip (hi, Whisky A Go Go!) through Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive, down Hollywood Boulevard into Hollywood, to Hollywood and Vine, down Melrose and then Wilshire...well, you get the idea. I went to the Farmer's Market, checked out the La Brea Tar Pits and the LA County Art Museum, then drove back up to Griffith Observatory (you know it from "Rebel Without a Cause") to take some truly amazing pictures of the city. I ended the day exploring Santa Monica's beach, and today I'll wander down to Venice Beach.

While I was enjoying a beer on the beach last night, I struck up a conversation with a guy whose life had eerily paralleled mine. He moved out here from DC to join his girlfriend, then couldn't find a job, then got dumped, and now finds himself living out of his car and selling off his worldly possessions in order to eat. However, he didn't regret the move. I gave him the outline of my situation, and he told me a) if he had to do it again, he would, b) if he did it again, he would definitely choose San Diego over LA, c) that I should do it, with a bare minimum of stuff, because it's surprising the amount of stuff you can live without, and d) it sounded like I'd already made the mental break with New York, even before San Diego. Sometimes bar conversations are just that, and sometimes they're the universe trying to tell you something.

I've made up my mind to move out here, it's just a question of when. If I move out here now, I'd have to get my own place and my own car. I can't put myself in the same position as last time--when I moved to a place I would never have considered moving to otherwise, and let my own life and my own identity get completely wrapped up in his, so that when he dumped me, I had less than nothing. Not even my own sense of self-worth to fall back on. I don't want to be a cynic, but I also want to be rational about this. There is a kid involved, after all. That being said, I'm going into this with my eyes open, so I've already got an advantage over previous situations. And I think that even without a compelling reason to move to San Diego, I'd want to finish the trip and start over in LA. I think I can definitely make a life of my own out here.

The problem is that I have no money. It takes capital to move, get a job, get a place, start a new life, and I just don't have it. Originally I thought I would get a temp job in New York and build up the bank account a bit, but I can get a temp job here just as easily, and quite honestly, it's becoming harder and harder to picture myself in New York for any length of time. I don't want to put myself in the position of "I won't move without a ring," either, because that's emotional blackmail and it's not the ring I care about--it's the sense of security. Perhaps the answer is to have some legal paperwork to bolster this effort.

Or perhaps the answer is to quit overanalyzing the situation and just enjoy the rest of the trip. It's good to be on the road again--don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my week of domestic bliss immensely, and I can't wait to have some more of it, but the road feels like home now. I guess there's more vagabond in me than I knew.