It can’t always be New York or LA

Everyone keeps making tik-toks using the tag-line “it can’t always be New York or LA”. I feel like I’m well-positioned to address the topic of the 2 major American Dream cities, because I have lived in New York, and now I’m trying to live in LA. The thing about living in New York City or Los Angeles, or even SF or Chicago or Philly, living in any major city or anywhere outside of the home, is that it requires Trying. The follow up the tag-line is “someone has to hold it down in XYZ city”. I have no shame in saying that I’ve held it down at my parents house in my adulthood. I’ve needed to ground myself at home in NJ at interval, whether it’s to get my money right or my mind right. I’m really grateful that I have a home and a family dynamic that I can use to reset. I also chose to hold it down in Colorado during my last lease. I used it as a little mountain sabbatical, to see who I am without a major city as part of my identity, and without my parents crib to swaddle myself back into. I learned that wherever you live, you’re ideally going to find a way to identify with that place. It’s part of building community and a sense of belonging, which is integral to the human experience. Which is why the transplant discourse pisses me off so much. But that isn’t the point I want to make right now. The point is: Different cities call for various different levels of trying, trying towards different things. Where you chose to live and where you’re coming from also determines the amount of effort you need to put in to actually make the “trying” part work.

In the ski-town in Colorado, for example, people were Trying to outdoors-max, to find peace or escape, to hang out or to find adventure. Seeing people Try towards something in the perfect environment for that thing made me realize in on what kind of life I’m personally Trying towards, and what kind of environment perfectly lends towards My thing. The kind of life I was Trying to have in NYC is different than the life I am Trying to have here, now, in LA. It can’t always be New York or La, but if you’re willing to Try, and those cities support what you’re Trying towards, then it absolutely can be. Though I think it’s more important to decide what you want out of life, before deciding where you want to live. Plus, you can change your mind. You can try and fail. I think my main thesis right now is not living on auto-pilot. Making choices for yourself. Trying because you want to, not because someone on Tiktok told you there is really great FroYo in New York, and you should move there to try it.

In New York City, I was proud of my corporate resume. I enjoyed going to clubs with hard-doors and letting the Finance boys know that I worked at a Private Equity Firm (quickly mentioning I was in Marketing and Events, in case they tried to measure me with questions). I was proud to see a flash in someone’s eye when I said I graduated from Villanova, like the word was a key that allowed me to move up in status, open special doors that didn’t simply check for the right shoes and a pretty face. I was proud to go out on weeknights with my pretty friends, I was proud to order my Hendricks martinis, extra dirty, because I was proud to be an adult with a sophisticated drink order memorized. There wasn’t much more to it than that. I was smug and happy, I was going out to nice dinners and paying off my credit card bill in full, with a hammer in my chest. I could afford to thrift second-hand clothes with good rich-girl tags, in-case anyone asked. I wanted to be plucked from the crowd by a rich guy, get married, hang out, call it a day. I didn’t really have a life-plan, per se. Work was work, it was boring as shit, but it was stable. I liked dressing up corporate and using the jargon with a touch of sarcasm in my voice. I liked shit-posting on my private snap story about how my expensive blue light glasses hid my puffy hangover eyes. New York always gave me nightlife to look forward to. It gave me friends with good salaries who wanted to go on expensive ski trips, to go out to eat in Mexico City, drive out to Montauk to party in a different room, wearing summer clothes. Even stepping out in broad daylight with no plans felt exciting. Early on, living in New York City made me feel like anything could happen. I loved the pulse of New York, and that I had an established network of college friends to make the big city feel smaller. I still love the pulse of New York, and I love the friends I met there. But the city doesn't currently facilitate the type of life I’m trying to live. It took guts to admit that, for some reason. The American Dream city of New York is not helping me reach my dreams right now.

I’ve said it countless ways: my version of New York, the web of socializing and working that I was sewn into, became predictable to me. It bordered on suffocating. The fun aimlessness of my early-twenties faded away. My friends started to move in with serious boyfriends and pick up hobbies. I made new friends at parties, grew my social-life bigger, and made no new goals. I was trying to feel good about myself, to entertain myself with the glamorous city-life I’d seen on re-run TV. I was on auto-pilot a little bit. And then I really started to feel like an NPC, just going through the motions. Every night out felt predictable,Different conversations with different people, same pattern. It was no longer exciting or stimulating. I started to resent the in-office declarations of what hot-spot restaurant you went to that weekend, what club. The corporate performance started to feel endless and aimless, it was no longer funny to pretend I was in an office sit-com. I was working in 3World-Trade-Center, I was in the center of it all. My New York life, the views from that office, could not get more beautiful. But It didn’t feel like something I’d watch on TV. It was just my monotonous, aimless life, and I wasn’t proud of it. I wasn’t building anything, I wasn’t working towards anything. I was barely Trying. Things were just happening, and I was just there. So I wanted to kill myself. Which is drastic, but true.

It’s important to mention that taking off on social media gave me the confidence to uproot my dulled New York City life. It was also challenging to navigate my online storytelling while I was depressed and suicidal, but I locked in. Something about sharing online was helping me uncover what I wanted out of life, and I was (and still am) clinging to that.

It’s also important to mention that shiny New York City only became dull for me because I was absolutely aimless. I had no spark, nothing to add. Or if I did, I didn’t know where to add it. I no longer knew how to Try. The reason things changed at all is because I started Trying not in an actual place, not in an office or a city, but online. Because you can hold it down from anywhere, using the internet.

Quick aside about starting my social media platform, because I field a lot of DM’s from people who want the step-by-step on how to pursue something similar online. I started posting on Tiktok after consulting my two very-closest friends from college. Anyone else I looped in, early on, was told, not asked. All I needed was confirmation from the two, that they would not be personally embarrassed or put in an uncomfortable position. I told them I wanted to exploit myself in any way but nudity, to give it my all, with the complete intention to reach a wide audience, gain a following, and make money. Once I got the thumbs up (and a vote of confidence) from those two, I didn’t really give a fuck if I embarrassed anyone else. I also didn’t give a fuck about embarrassing my family, because I wasn’t talking to my family at the time. I should also mention that I had been sober for about 8 months when I decided to start posting online, so I didn’t feel like anything would be out-of-control cringe. It would be cringe in the way that I know myself, and I am presenting myself, and if people cringe at me then they just do not fuck with me as me, generally speaking. Not everyone will, which is important to remember. Niching down and growing a community is much more comfortable than going viral, too. When you’re viral (as I was back in October 2024) you’re getting pushed to people outside of your target audience. So the chance of people not resonating with you is higher. It’s super uncomfortable, and it really threw me off. Like, I spiraled. I would have stopped posting all together, if I hadn’t already firmed up some altruistic motives. The original motivation was money. Or free stuff, rather. I wanted mountains of packages, like I saw influencers getting during covid. I was sort of envious of their girlish gluttony, and I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t have the opportunity to revel in an endless stream of cardboard boxes, too. Thats the relationship I have with envy. It’s a great motivator. I ended up revising my goals, which is important to do. I stopped caring about brand deals and free stuff because I felt guilty making other girls feel the way I felt about influencers (envious, greedy, like what I had wasn’t enough). I cared more about advocating for sobriety (because it was changing and growing my life and my perspective in a really positive way) and destigmatizing bipolar (because it was a death-sentence diagnosis, and I am a success story). There were many days where I woke up in a panic, thinking “what the fuck have I done, I ruined my life on the internet, and now I can’t go back”. Sharing about bipolar and sobriety became my north-star. I couldn’t be fucking up my life if I were helping other people struggling with theirs. So instead of pussying out and continuing to live on auto-pilot, I locked in and firmed up goals even more. First I started with 50-year goals, then 20 and 10, and just recently I’ve developed month by month goals, one year goals, two year goals, and so on. I’ve gotten descriptive with exactly how I’d spend my money, where I’d go and who I’d be with. That was the fun part. Thinking of where to go next and what to do next, on a daily basis even…..that was the hard part. That’s where I’m at now.

All that build up to say: I am turning this ship around, fueled by the confidence I got from my online platform. I want to live a more creative, expressive life in an actual place now. I want to be in the 3D, which is a night-and-day difference from when I hated real-life, when I had to be drunk to enjoy it, and when I romanticized calling it quits and dying. It’s different than wanting to be an online influencer, telling you to buy things. I realized I want to make paintings and physical art, I wanted to entertain offline (where I’m not censored by Zuckerberg or Elon). So I got myself to a point where I felt confident to dream beyond the life I was living, and then I needed to get clear on my personal goals. Once I wrote the long term goals, I started to align my free time, my habits, my interests and my hobbies with those goals. Another thing I should point out: I had to stop drinking to start doing any of that. Mostly because I had a problem with overdoing it, but also, drinking is a distraction.

It was only then, once I eliminated distractions and was intentional with my time and my habits, that I started to think about where I was living.

Currently, I am trying to live in a beautiful, bright, spacious place. I am trying to live somewhere where I can spend time with creative, like-minded people in a collaborate way (I believe this is the new way I can fill my social battery. Seeing that NYC nightlife and The Scene wasn’t really doing it for me anymore). I am trying to live somewhere where networking and socializing are in the same bucket. I am trying to live somewhere that facilitates my career. I am trying to live somewhere that encourages me to grow and to learn.

I feel lucky to test-the-waters by living in new places in my 20s. I’m doing it while I’m single, while I’m making a career-pivot. I have the freedom and the resilience to take on debt, to feel stupid but not devastated over it, because I have the blind-belief that I can get my money back, and then some. I think that a new environment lends itself to that sort of naive hope, too. Moving somewhere that you feel positive about will make you see more positivity. Yes, moving feels expensive and risky. People bring that up a lot. And I can confirm that it feels scary some days. I think things have to feel a bit scary in order to feel exciting. And the worst thing that could happen would mean rerouting. You realize that you can reroute over and over again, once you start doing it. If you haven’t yet tried, you might call rerouting a “failure”.

It feels obvious when the location doesn’t align with lifestyle or the future dream-version of you. This isn’t a failure. For example, Colorado was a stint, not a new life. It maybe went on longer than it needed to, thanks to my year lease, but I squeezed some hiking and some perspective out of it. Now I know that I will not sign a lease in a new city before living in a sublet first. A lease can also mean pushing yourself, forcing yourself to grow and lock in. There’s something to be gained from every experience, I think.

I also learned recently that I will not sublet in a new city before writing out my short term goals, and re-writing my long term goals. It might seem simple to make a plan, but I’ve also been working to make split decisions and plan after. Otherwise I wouldn’t do things. And you can’t even really plan too much, because life really has a mind of its own. God, or something. I like to trust the universe will shake-out the best case scenario for me.

Especially because I am still in the uncertain-uncomfortable phase. I’m still praying for Mercy, praying for income and employment, and praying for the right living arrangement to fall into my lap.

The apartment building I’m subletting for the month of September has a big roof that I didn’t know about. There’s a 360 view of Silver Lake, that I’ve been drawing with oil pastels on watercolor paper. Silver Lake is a neighborhood I chose because it reminds me of Brooklyn. LA is not like NYC much at all, to the point where it’s almost unfair to compare. This is also why I want to be in LA. It does feel like la la land, and I think I deserve that kind of lobotomy lifestyle. I’ve struggled long enough.

It feels extra lobotomy-core right now, because my current lack of structure, lack of transportation, my lack of income and financial freedom. There have been days where I ignore that, where I have fun and giggle and play with my new friends. There are also days where I wish I actually had a lobotomy, so I didn’t have to face the stress of financial burden, of not knowing the answer to “how” or “what’s next”. This is not a great foot to start off on, financial instability, but it’s not impossible. I marched around with my resumes yesterday in heat-wave temperatures, and once I land a gig, I will start paying off my debts. It will work out. I can’t afford a car, but I can get a ride. I walked to hand out my resume so that I know I can walk to work.

It feels great being in LA, if we talk in abstractions and glaze over the rough-bits. Ask me in a few years and I’ll laugh, I’m sure. I’m even trying to laugh now, and to go easy on myself, because I’m doing the thing, even if I’m doing it the hard way. Like I said, I’m working on staying positive. I’m also working on detaching from the outcome. LA will be here if I need to go home and get my money right, and I will have LA to look forward to if I do need to leave and come back. It seems counter productive and counter intuitive to do that, but I’m not God, and I don’t hold the map to my perfect, best-decision life. I really wish I did. Instead, I’m just trusting my intuition, and hoping the universe gives me clear signs for what’s most-right. I’ll know what’s next when it starts happening. If nothings happening, then I’ll keep poking and making deicsions until I see change. If the change isn’t good, I’m being rerouted.

On the sublet roof there’s a wooden table-set that stains my clothes with pollen and dust. I sit out there some days and forget that I haven’t technically left my apartment. I write and I draw on the roof, and I remind myself that if I were at my parents house in NJ, I’d be doing the same thing on the front-porch or in the back-yard. In New York, I didn’t even have an outdoor space. When I pluck warm guava off my neighbors tree, I also forget that I haven’t technically left my apartment. It feels like a big luxurious place, this sublet, because it extends to the roof and the guava tree. I like the neighborhood and its hills, I like drawing it with oil pastels from the roof. I like being alone. I like free fruit.

It’s cheaper to live alone in LA than it is to live with a roommate in NYC. Which is great, because I’m at a time in my life where I’d really like to live alone.

There was a point in time where I lived alone in New York, and I hated it. That was at the same time where I hated being by myself. I never thought I’d get over that, because I had convinced myself that I was constantly with people because I am extroverted, and popular, and that I had tons of friends that I simply needed to see all of the time.

When I lived in my tiny one bedroom apartment in Nolita, I made a concentrated effort to never be home alone. I’d host people for my own “afters”, or I’d come home and pit stop before shooting out texts to continue to the night. I loved how central my apartment was, the perfect waiting room. I was in my bender-era of NYC at the time. I would stay out all night, the WFH work-week was a hungover blur, broken up by random weeknight plans. I’d sleep in and wake up to alarmed teams messages from my boss, asking why I didn’t show up to the Princeton office last week, why I didn’t log on until 10 am on Monday. I was a mess, essentially. But I felt like I was pushing up against a pillow-fort, and I wanted to be free. When I did show up, I looked the part, and my ability to articulate myself never failed to dig me out of professional-trouble. I felt amazing about myself, actually, because I felt like accountability and responsibility were not burdens I needed to bear. I think the world “entitled” works here, and in many other areas of my life. I was able to keep up the facade that I took my work semi-seriously, and I could always find someone who wanted to post up somewhere with a beer. Plans could always unfold into something exciting. My life was a movie, and my consequences were never going to be bad.

Being online has pushed me out of the homogenous bubble that was my entire world, before. The reason I don’t have scary consequences is because my parents can afford to pitch in financially. That is my privilege, privilege I didn’t even know I had, because everyone around me had the similar privileges. I was familiar with parents who were happy to bring friends to nice dinners during a visit (my own parents, and others). My mom can offer me a Sephora trip at random, because she needs mascara, and I need everything. As I mentioned before, if I fuck up my finances, or get in over my head, I can go home and mooch. While I’m mooching, I can get my money right and acquire new clothes, by accompanying my mom on errand-runs-turned-shopping-trips. If I go to Costco while I’m home for a weekend, I’ll be bringing new shampoo and new collagen back to my apartment. So I’m not handed money, but I’m handed things that I couldn’t otherwise pay for. In this way, I am spoiled. I’m not entirely spoiled, because I’m very grateful for this dynamic, even though I’m never certain of it. Sometimes I’ll ask for new shampoo and my mom will say, OK? Get it yourself. Sometimes I penny pinch and ask my mom to cut my hair, other times she books me a haircut and pays for it. We get our nails done together and she mentions the fact that she’s paying, so I feel kind of moochy and weird about it, but don’t offer my credit card up because I know how much their “house wine” costs. There have been times where I assume my mom is paying, and we get to the front of the check out line, and she says: OK, now you pay for it. And then I clam up, because I didn’t even want the item that bad to begin with. All that to say, my parents are sure to make these donations feel like a gift, and they make sure that the gift is unexpected.

I’m a big girl now, so I don’t get saved from my bad choices the same way I used to. I’d happily allow my parents to pay for my rent, but they don’t offer, and I don’t dare ask, for fear of being smacked with a scary talk about reality. I’d happily pay extra, just to avoid having that conversation, actually. I keep chasing to live in places where I can’t go home and mooch for the weekend. So when I say I really want to live in LA, that means I’m really going to have to Try. It’s harder here, for me, than it is in NYC. And LA is cheaper than NYC.

But currently, the main goal is how I will stay in LA: by getting my money right. This will also show my parents that I can be a responsible adult, and that I can figure out a way to make life work for me without a crutch. I’d really love for that to be the case, but it feels really hard not to keep falling back on my plan B crutch, every time the panic sets in. I want to prove that my decisions are made and executed responsibly, that I can be trusted. I also need to stay positive and believe that I can do it. I am working on rewiring my brain to see silver linings and opportunities. I am working on managing my stress, instead of letting it get too heavy and trying to hand it off to anyone who will pick up the phone. I keep myself grounded with gratitude, which is a practice I’ve gotten into on substack. I do my updates and my foxhole prayers over there, basically. I listen to my positive affirmations on YouTube, and I listen to my manifestation audio books on Spotify. I tell myself that writing for free online is a good habit to build, for when I’m a famous author. I’m not sure writing will become easier, but I do think I can make free-time writing second-nature, to the point where I can whip out great book after great book and actually get paid for it. I’ll hopefully get some tips from people who have been doing the whole writing thing in LA, when I meet more people doing the writing thing in LA. See, this is why I’m in LA. Writing on the roof, and imagining the best case socialXcareer scenarios.

If you can’t tell by my writing, or by my mood-swing stream-of-consciousness instagram stories, life feels like whiplash right now. Rollercoaster whiplash, not car-crash whiplash. It’s supposed to be fun and risky and hot-potato exciting, not that serious. And it is all of those things. I’ve had fun plans, and I continue to make fun plans, and I’m laughing and enjoying my new life, when I’m not totally freaking out about money and unemployment.

I really want this to be my new life.

And while I want to icepick my way out of debt, I also want to believe in/focus on my dreams. So let’s try to keep things positive. It’s very slippery right now, with all of the stress and uncertainty. I’m on a good-streak of believing myself when I say “I can do it”. I have good reasons why I want to do it.

There are lots of palm trees in LA, which allows me to pretend like I’m on a beach vacation. Like a beach vacation, there is little structure. I like that the lack of structure feels communal. It seems like very few people know what day it is, and everyone keeps alluding to the fact that “no one” has a job. Which is funny, because I am so desperate for a job, and I can’t seem to find one. I’m extremely uncomfortable about that. It’s unclear if the other jobless people feel that way.

As soon as I walk in the door to my sublet, I am blasted with freezing cold air conditioning that I can’t seem to adjust. I come and go at random, because everything I do right now is slightly random. It’s governed by goals at the very least, but I’m just making up shit to do, so that I can feel productive.

My open luggage sits below a rack of clothes that keeps collapsing on me, reminding me that this is not my home. I am a well-accommodated guest in this LA life at the moment. My most colorful things with the best looking fabrics are hanging, and it makes me feel like I have a good wardrobe, like I don’t need to shop and change myself to fit in. The open luggage holds my pants and my shorts. The desk below the mantle has my pajamas, my shirts, my workout clothes. I probably won’t wear a fraction of the stuff I packed. My small carry on and my checked bag each weighed 50 pounds. I don’t miss anything I left behind in Colorado, but I definitely need to get it before my lease ends in October. The idea of returning to that dingey apartment really pisses me off. I don’t want to spend another second there. But I deffo need to get that stuff. I left all my good sweaters.

There have been 2 technically-separate heatwaves since I arrived in LA a few weeks ago, so I’m glad I didn’t bring the nice-sweaters. It was even torrential down pouring one day, thundering and everything, and it felt like I was back on the east coast.

I’ve made 2 friends from the internet, who live near me and pick me up willingly and frequently. I don’t want the willingness to run out, but I am also growing more and more tired of the no-car social-dynamic. Being sober with a car in LA would be awesome, because I could just drive everywhere at any time, never stranded. Despite what everyone says about Elon Musk, I still yearn for a self-driving Tesla that could find me open parking via satellite. I wouldn’t even have to embarrass myself parallel parking or merging. I also wouldn’t care if the car drove me off a cliff, because I am very volatile right now, with all of this uncertainty. I am not suicidal, I am just learning how much really don’t like uncertainty. Death, at least, is certain. Your whole life until your final graduation is pretty certain, if you have parents like mine. You just complete the tasks that get you to the next grade. Being an adult is not like that.

What I like about the whole no-car thing is that I feel like a little kid again. Without all of the awkwardness and feeling not-at-home in my body. The actual urban-planning of LA makes me feel nostalgic for my childhood, too. I feel very healed, even saying that, because for the longest time I felt really wounded by my childhood. Getting picked on (technically bullied, but I guess everyone is bullied, and I’m tired of identifying with being a victim) really stuck with me for far too long. I had mostly great days, weeks, and years in childhood, and I had let the bad days, weeks and years overshadow the good memories. I’m really trying to let go of my limiting beliefs right now, so I’d like to let go of my weird bad memories, too.

So LA is a town, with a bunch of little mini towns inside of it, with main-streets or downtowns or third-avenues or whatever you’d call it. Strip Malls, too. Some people grew up with strip malls as their main thing. Which I can kind of visualize, because there was a year during my childhood where I hung out behind strip malls with kids from the opposite side of the main highway, which was a road I was technically not allowed to cross. I was hanging out with these kids because I had been ostracized from the kids who lived in my town, all 26 kids in my entire grade had decided they did not like me anymore. So I was forced to make new friends, and we would loiter at 7/11, which was on my side of the highway. I’d have to go home if they decided to hang out at the park on their side, because I was and always have been a Good Girl who wants my parents to be happy with me. I did start meddling with weed around this time, with this group, and my parents weren’t very happy about that. But they recognized that I kind of needed friends, and here they were, hanging out in the parking lot and drinking out of water bottles and smoking weed. My new crew.

Hanging out in a parking lot felt just as cool, if not cooler than hanging out on 3rd avenue outside of the surf shop, or the chocolate shop, or the pizzaria. See, my side of the highway had those things, and it had the beach. Every group of kids, friends or enemies, would hang out on the hottest part of the sand, up next to the boardwalk and the pavilion. Sometimes we would hangout under the boardwalk, like a fort, once we became too old to illegally sell string-bracelets and painted shells next to the food-shack. There was a spring-fed lake with an old bridge, and we would jump off quickly, and pedal away madly. I had a Norman Rockwell childhood, basically. My parents worked hard to buy a house in their dream town. I didn’t really know how good I had it, because I was either really busy reveling in my popularity, or lamenting that the kids in school were calling me an ugly gorilla and letting me know I wasn’t invited to whatever it was that everyone was doing. For a long time, I let those memories overshadow how charmed my life was.

It’s weird growing up and leaving a perfect bubble, to learn that not everyone grew up in a perfect bubble. I’ve gone through phases of not wanting to mention it at all. Being around new friends is making me think about that. I need to be more-proud of my little New Jersey upbringing, honestly. I don’t know what’s good with all of this self-imposed shame, but somewhere along the journey I picked it up and started carrying it. I hate baggage. And I’d like to imagine my new LA chapter will allow me to put it down and leave it there, because it’s not useful to me anymore. I want to have more gratitude for my happy childhood, that my parents worked hard for. It wasn’t perfect, but it was beautiful. I really enjoyed the part where I had the freedom to ride around on beach cruisers in a pack of happy skinny bikini-clad friends, with someone dripping-wet on handlebars. It was really fun when the boy you liked held on to your bike seat, riding next to you on a skateboard, so he didn’t have to work hard to keep up with the pack. I wasn’t really thinking about the size of the houses or the charm of the town when I was super happy like that. In my adulthood, I feel at peace in charming neighborhoods. Walking through the nice suburbs of LA reminds me of good childhood memories, basically. And I want to feel those happy child-like feelings again, and I have been, lately. Which is another big reason why I want to stay in LA. I’d go back and hold it down in New Jersey again, if I am cornered into it, especially since I’m seeing my hometown in a better light than I used to. I’m sure there is more learning and growing that could be done there, if need be. I can also acknowledge that I’m super lucky to have a cool place to “hold it down” in, if not LA or NYC.

The east coast is turning seasons right now, and there is a heatwave in LA (again). The kitchen has big windows and white tiles that feel sticky from the heat, in a way that slightly grosses me out. That, and the tiles show every little speck of anything, so much so that I wipe them down once a day, in a way that sometimes feels neurotic. That may also be why they feel sticky. My parents house always feels clean, and my NYC apartment never did.

The sublet girl has filled the place with plants. My parents do not keep live-plants in the house. I don’t think I will keep plants inside at my future-place, because I don’t really like taking care of things. They do transform the room though, and maybe I’d keep a cactus in the kitchen, like this girl does. My mom hoards dishware, which bothers me, but it’s her house, her rules. The sublet girl has 4 ceramic mugs with a unique glaze and angular handle, so you can tell they’re Objects of Design. I love objects like that, especially as I get older. The sublet-girl has them displayed on a credenza, like art. I want to live with less items that look more like art, too. I never really thought of how to do that, until I lived in the place of someone who does.

In the sublet and in my parents house, there is art on every wall. I don’t think I’d put any of the sublet girls art in my own living space. Most of the things in my parents house are heirlooms from my mom’s Grandfather, and I think they’re very beautiful. I have poached some of my mom’s heirloom art to decorate my various apartments. What I like about the sublet girls art, though, is that you can tell she picked these pieces out because she liked them, and maybe didn’t ask anyone else. This sounds rude, but that’s how I view it, and this observation is actually very helpful for future-me, weighing in on future-art by myself, to decorate my future-place in a very personal way.

I am trying to manifest this next chapter in LA, a seamless transition from subletting and uncertainty to decorating my own place, and how I’d do it. I like picking and choosing from my past experiences and my observations. It makes me feel like I’m doing something right, being alive and all. Not an NPC. Not on autopilot. Thinking about things and making decisions for myself.

I think about my dreams everyday now that I don’t know what’s next. I am going to keep doing that, looking at the north-star instead of worrying about my toenail thats falling off (from hiking in Colorado). Like: It makes me feel less afraid about what’s right in front of me, when I think about my dreams. But I also need to keep an eye on what’s infront of me, and to keep acting with my circumstances in mind (like, I can’t be too rough on my toe, or the nail glued toenail will certainly fall off). I don’t know why, I’m increasingly certain I’ll reach my goals, using this mindset. Probably becoming obsessed with them, and because I am treating my mindset like armor. And it’s really a wild thing to think that a few years ago I had no goals at all. And there was a point I was entirely happy living my life like that. I’m glad that I keep note of what it is about life that makes me happy, and that I constantly orient myself to travel in that direction. I think I’m at a point where I’d probably fare well t set my ship on auto-pilot for a second, and enjoy the journey. My panic isn’t going to do anything helpful. Worrying won’t make things more certain. I can do this.