Five years down...

I probably should have mentioned this back in June...but as of June 2008 I have lived in Los Angeles for five years. FIVE WHOLE YEARS!!! That's 19.23% of my life!! I did the math!! It wasn't hard...basic algebra...

My Los Angeles five year anniversary came and went and I'm pretty sure I didn't even notice. When I moved to LA I was 21 and my plan was to try LA out for 1 year and see where that landed me. I would like to be able to tell you what I planned to do after that first year but the truth is I never had any idea. All I knew is that I couldn't live my entire life in one area of the country. I couldn't go to elementary school in Sunnyvale, high school in San Jose and college in Santa Clara, settle down, never live anywhere else and still be happy. Even now I still think I'd be missing out if I never lived outside of California. 

I can very vividly remember the day my parents, my brother and Linus helped me move in...I took one look around my apartment and at the downtown skyline from my balcony and thought, "I'm going to be here a lot longer than a year".  Even as I had that thought I never considered I'd still be here five years down the road and even crazier that my life would be what it is now. 

I've learned a lot in those five years. The most important thing is that everything I say won't happen or that I say I would NEVER do seems to happen. I'm not talking about when I said "I would never do heroin", I'm talking about when I said in college "I'll never move to LA" or "I'm not dating Chris".  I now hesitate to say absolutes out loud and I fully expect the unexpected (wait...does that make it expected then?). The truth of the matter is that I tried to leave LA but couldn't pull the trigger. I almost moved to San Francisco and enrolled in culinary school (the baking and pastry program thank you very much). I had filled out the application, visited the school, spoken with the admissions rep... I just couldn't I can't even begin to wrap my brain around what my life would be like if I had made that decision. I'm not sure exactly what it is that has kept me here so long, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with a certain fella....and all the possibilities of what could happen here if I just gave it time. I can happily say that five years later I have some of the most amazing friends who I wouldn't trade for the world, have found a steady job working in the entertainment industry and have a really cute dog who, fingers crossed, will eventually calm the F down.