i moved to LA because i wanted to do something different. i wanted to do something different because i thought it would make me grow as a person. what bothers me the most about living in LA is that my day to day life is not spectacularly happy, what with peet's stressing me out and most of my lifelong friends being 400 miles away, and i'm feeling that sense of purposelessness (essessessess) that comes with having graduated with a liberal arts degree that i'm not planning on using. i'm used to going to school and having a focus, and the lack of one in my current life makes me feel like i'm not doing anything.

i'm not saying that i'm miserable down here - i've been crafting up a storm, and while that's a very personal success i can tell my style has changed and developed, which is pretty cool. i just got a new job at a Craft Center (in addition to peet's, it's only 2 days a week) and i've already learned to needlefelt and how to knit more properly (note to origamist : apparently i do twist my stitches when i purl, and it makes things weird, but they showed me how to do it properly. i kind of like my funky look tho, i may continue it in future projects). i'm hanging out with jesse and developing that friendship, which is definitely an important one that i will have for the rest of my life. jesse is also an incredibly assertive person (which makes sense since so much of his life revolves around academia) and the way he states his opinions on things makes me think more about what i think, how i think, and whether or not my opinion needs to be stated and aired and broadcasted. which is actually kind of a new thing for me - i'm used to just saying what i think almost as soon as i think it. so i guess there's some personal growth there too.

if i'm being honest instead of whiny (and what fun is that?) i have to admit that a big part of my life that i'm uncomfortable with right now is that i'm not where i want to end up. which is completely the point of being a young adult. I'm not in a city that i want to settle in, i don't have a job that i will want to stick with for the next decade, i'm single (which usually doesn't bother me until i hang out with everyone i know who is not just in a relationship but with the person they think they want to marry), and i don't know exactly what i want to do with myself. while this is definitely uncomfortable, even i have to admit that that is supposed to be the point. I'm in LA because i'm pretty sure i want to end up in berkeley and i want to be more well rounded when i do so. so of course i'm not where i want to end up. I'm at my first round of jobs and figuring out what i like or don't like, so that i can make more informed decisions later. and being single - that's as much a personal choice as anything. i could be dating some guy i didn't really care about while i waited for someone i did care about to come along, but i like being independent. i will get there when i do. so if i'm being honest, uncomfortable and frustrating is not necessarily the worst place in the world.

it would be nice if my day to day life were happier, but i guess that's really on me. (again, i want to reiterate that i'm not miserable by any stretch of the imagination. i just wish i had fewer bad days.) i bought a soccer ball at target, and so next time i go to jesse's i'm hijacking doug and we're gonna go to the park and play. desiree is moving, which sucks a lot since she's sort of my go-to person down here. but that just means i have to make new friends. which is a totally worthwhile skill to develop. so really, things are fine. i just needed to remind myself of that.