Another unemployed Los Angeles morning

Being the crackhead that I am, I wake up every morning usually around 6 or 7 due to my stubborn circadian rythms and contemplate why I'm here, what I've experienced so far, and fantasize about numerous future possibilities. I lie on my IKEA mattress on the floor in my barren yet peaceful room and watch the sky turn from pink to gold over the quiet Toluca Lake rooftops until bodily cravings for caffeine, food or my morning bathroom ritual rouse me out from under my duvet. My morning is spent with little to no outside stimulation: no music, no writing, no reading. I just lie there and think. This has been a meditative experience so far, and it would be almost mindful in every task except for the past and future memories that keep bubbling up to the surface.

I've managed to keep food in my belly with various receptionist temp jobs and freelance work, but being here is just sinking me further and further into the kind of debt that seizes me with a cruel panic. I've given up being worried about it and instead focus on a multitude of options I have before me. I have abandoned my comfort-oriented state of mind and have replaced it with a sort of aimless gypsy mentality. There are so many things I love about this city, but most of them are the personal attachments I've made here and the free or next-to-free simple pleasures I've discovered here: hiking in Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, taking the tram up to the Getty Museum, strolling through the freakish crowd at Venice Beach, sneaking into private, maximum security beach accesses in Malibu, driving up the Pacific Coast Highway, movie screenings at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, walking through Griffith Park, and the strange familiarity of sitting in Footsie's (a surrogate Jackpot little dive bar in Highland Park where the most popular drink special is "Samara's Backyard" - a shot of Jeremiah Weed and a can of PBR for $5.)

I have not written much here because I've simply felt uninspired to share my superficial depression with those of you who might be reading this for fear of giving it a perpetual power over me. I've lived in denial of it, ignored it, distracted myself from it in so many ways, but in the end it is still unavoidably there. Having spent much of my early adulthood learning how to overcome this sort of destructive mindset, I refuse to surrender to it. I did not come out here to run away from anything unless it was the fear of losing my heart. I did not come here as a result of already being depressed. I came out here to break away from all the comforts I'd become addicted to, to completely downsize my material existence (which I've achieved and then some), to put complete faith in and get more in touch with the forces that guide me, and to prove to myself that this type of faith will always lead to happiness in the long run in spite of what initial expectations I had of how it would manifest.

Since I made the decision to let go and follow my own heart, I've made some intense connections with people all over the map. These connections I've allowed to flourish since I left NC have reminded me of just how beautiful and generous the world can be. These connections consist of not only the people I spent time with while on the road, but the people I've gotten to know better here in Southern California and my own friends and family that I left behind. I love each and every one of you with an intensity I've not felt capable of before, and I realize the responsible force behind that is discovering the love and respect I have for myself. I went in search of my heart and found it mirrored back to me in every soul that's touched my life.

But the time has come to do something different.

I have no regrets.