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Rivver // Am I Ok (feat. Milk & Bone)

I’ve been living in a hotel in San Diego for the past week, and will continue to live in it through the rest of this week. 

The week before, I was in San Francisco. Next week, I’ll be in LA. The week after that, San Francisco. Then Vegas. Then Portland. Then back to LA. Then NYC. And then it will be early June.  

And I’m ok. I’ve acclimated to this life lived out of a suitcase, and I’ve learned how to love it, how to be grateful for it, how to feel centered in the midst of constant movement and travel. 

I’m writing again, reading again, working out and going to yoga regularly again, and as a result, I feel like I’ve been able to rediscover my sense of self. I’m breathing more deeply, walking more confidently, venturing out alone without experiencing a crippling fear of the unexpected - a feeling that punctuated my first few months living in LA when I didn’t know the city and didn’t know myself inside of it. 

I think too often we forget about our malleability, of the way we evolve over time. More recently I’ve been reminded of how I hated my first year living in San Francisco. I could barely afford to live in the city, I worked at a job that I didn’t believe in, and my relationship was in a precarious position. It’s funny to think of how much I pined for LA then, how I thought switching geographies would cure all my self-doubt and general dissatisfaction. 

Then I got a new job and (perhaps subconsciously) dedicated the first year of my long-distance relationship to myself. I started going to yoga, changed my entire wardrobe, and made a conscious effort to spend dedicated time alone and with friends. 2012, despite being a really shitty, challenging, lonely year, was also a transformative one. I made a lot of mistakes and said and did things I, in retrospect, shouldn’t have said nor done, but I still sometimes think wistfully to it, to what that year represented in the timeline of my life. 

I came out of 2012 with a staggering overconfidence. I thought that I had learned everything there was to learn about myself and became complacent. LA forced me to confront the reality that I’d outgrown that identity, that it was time to cultivate a new one. I was clinging to a life that no longer existed, and holding on to a version of myself that didn’t fit into this new life. 

I think perhaps our lives are marked with these periods of transition and transformation, where we shed our past selves like an old skin and come out refreshed on the other side. 

I can feel it now like I felt it before. And it feels ok. 

Sons et al. // Misshaped Mouth

I almost never have time to write these days. Or read. Or create. The months pass and I have to remind myself that time will never magically manifest, it only evaporates, slips right past my fingers before I can even register that it’s there. 

I feel like I’ve been tricking myself into believing that more time lies right around the corner. I just need to get through this big pitch, or this big event, or this big trip, and then there will be time, waiting patiently for me on the other side. This, of course, is a lie we all tell ourselves. Time never waits, we only wait for more time. 

On the rare occasion that I have an opportunity to pause and reflect, I realize that oh fuck, years have been passing and I haven’t finished any of the projects I picked up and then put away, saving for a rainy day. And now, here I am, wasting away in a creative drought. 

What remains of my creative bent is a graveyard of discarded hobbies - books I bought and never finished, magazines I subscribed to but never flipped through, a Bamboo tablet I’ve never used, and most disappointing of all, empty, barren journals. It’s only April and I can already feel the end of this year descending upon me, a weight of disappointment around all the New Year’s Resolutions I failed to keep. I want to take this rare moment of clarity to rededicate myself to investing time in the things that bring me personal satisfaction, the things that define me, not as a working professional because fuck that, but as a person. 

I want to: 

  • get back into journaling on a consistent cadence
  • work out 3-4x/week (yoga and cardio and maybe climbing and maybe hip-hop dancing)
  • build a website 
  • save up to buy a house 

This is the year I do the things I love. 

TV On The Radio // Will Do

Big, big things happening. 

While I still spend most of my time living out of a suitcase, hopping from one city to the next, I feel like I’ve settled better into the routine of it all. It now takes me 30 minutes to pack (sometimes less), and I’ve become a pro and getting through airport security in less than 5 minutes. I’ve perfected the science of short-distance traveling. 

It still sometimes wears on me to feel like I only exist in the distance between cities, but I’m learning how to adapt to this new life and the new opportunities it provides. I’ve started working at Cross Campus, a coworking space in Santa Monica populated with LA creatives and tech professionals, and it’s been a welcome change of pace to spend my work days surrounded by humans again (contrast this to just myself, at home, with no pants or makeup, circled and barked at by an exuberant, adorable puppy who insists on treating my fingers like moving chew toys).

While I still have yet to meet very many new people or friends in LA, it just feels good to be outside and to be seen, to receive confirmation that I exist through the validation of wandering eyes. I’m not just a ghost floating aimlessly through this wide, expansive city. 

On the work front, there are some really exciting things on the horizon. Even though I’ve been working really late hours over the last couple of weeks, tonight included, I know I’m working towards something tangible, something really milestone-setting, and that this “something” is something I can be truly proud of. So I’ve been powering through it, grateful for the support of my team (of 6 people!) that I’ve built over the past year. Sorry to be so vague, but with nothing set in stone yet, I’m hesitant to jinx everything by being so bold as to write about it. 

I have to admit that this life still surprises me; I never imagined that this is what my mid-20s would look like. When I think about my present life, I can’t help but parallel it to the fictitious “future” invented by my 16-year old self - a life without an address, filled with volumes of writing for various publications.

It’s sometimes hard not to feel like I’m being disloyal to my previous self, that I’ve somehow betrayed the ideals that at one time defined me. But I’d like to think that if my 16-year old self could have foreseen the true future, could have seen the person I would one day become, she would have approved, and pat me on the back for being a boss ass bitch.