Milestone
This is my 302nd post, according to my WordPress dashboard. That’s a lot of posts, since I first started using WordPress on Hello Toby way back when.
But there’s an even bigger milestone coming up very soon.
Saturday, December 27th, 2008 marks the official one year anniversary of my move to Los Angeles from New York.
On December 27, 2007, at 10:00am PST, I touched down at Los Angeles International Airport and started a new life, completely different from the one I’d been living — and entirely different from the one I have now. I walked out of LAX thinking I was here to live with the guy I wanted to spend my life with, I was here to finish my Bachelor’s degree while learning a language I was desperate to speak, I was here to take care of his younger sister in his mother’s home and permanently implant myself into this family, further securing a future I desperately wanted at the time.
And now, almost a year later, I lay in a bed in an apartment I’d never dreamed of, in a town I’d never been to (and certainly didn’t want to live in), trying to fall asleep so that I can be awake tomorrow for a job I never thought I could possibly get, next to a boyfriend I’d never expected to have who gives me the kind of love I never thought I’d receive — or deserve.
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself: self, how did I get here?
(That’s from the Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime, p.s.)
So how did I get here? I guess the long answer has something to do with the breakup with Sean, which basically got the ball rolling on a lot of this, and with the “growing up” that I did as a direct result of it, and with meeting Derek, who helped the ball rolling on just about everything else I have going on in my life. But the short answer is… I’m still myself trying to figure out how the hell I got here.
And I guess that’s okay. As long as it’s working, I don’t have to know how I got here, right? I’m still going to look back and wonder how it all fell into this particular place, but I’m definitely not complaining or anything, because right now I couldn’t be happier with the place I’ve fallen into.
Happy First Birthday, Los Angeles Jess. Now get some sleep; AT&T Interactive needs your bright and shining face in the morning.