And in one weeks' time...

In six days, I'll pack up my room. I'll dump out the garbage bags that hold my stuff from my apartment in the East Village. I'll shove things into suitcases and I'll wonder how many pairs of underwear to bring.

How can I know how many pairs to bring when I don't know how long I'll stay? I'll need to go longer than the days of the week. But how much longer?What do the Good People® do in this situation?

With a week to go before I leave, I am focused on the very small picture, the one that fancy TVs have at the bottom of their screen. I'm focused on the E! channel and not CNN.

I'm wondering about the silly things, the tiny minutiae of daily life. I'm thinking about bathing suits and gym memberships. About car insurance and tire changes and whether I should get AAA. (Or if I should go to AA.) I'm asking Rachel--are there good laundromats in LA, like Kim's Laundromat in NY, who faithfully did my laundry every two weeks for $15? It only took them two hours to clean, wash and fold. Will I find a place? Will I do laundry on my own in Los Angeles?

What I really mean is this: will I be different in Los Angeles? What will be different in Los Angeles?

I'll drive. I'll drive in LA, and that's new. I'll buy a car and look for jobs and put on black pants that are too tight and I will go to interviews. I'll babysit. I'll go back to Skylight Books. I'll be happy when my friends are visiting, and I'll be sad when they leave. I'll sigh peacefully at the beach and sigh woefully in traffic.

In a week, I will live in Los Angeles.

--

After I wrote this, I looked through my old Flickr stream and what did I see but this--

November 2008. My first solo trip to California, a trip where Rachel and I pinky swore that we'd live here together one day. She was already there but I was in New York, home.

I came home on the red eye the Monday after Thanksgiving. I got out of my relationship and moved into Brooklyn and then the Lower East Side and then the East Village and there were other jobs, and boys, and fun mistakes but the entire time, I thought...

I just know I'll go to California one day.

I was right.

It just took some time to get here.