the end of LA LA land

On Halloween of 2007 I was awake at 5:30 am loading my girlfriend, myself and a wailing cat into the cab of a seventeen foot U-haul bound for Los Angeles, just like the millions of naive 24 year olds before me.  On Halloween 2010 I was again awake at 5:30 am a 10 foot U-haul parked in the driveway of my apartment stuffed with boxes a few pieces of furniture and random treasures like a Millenium Falcon, a stuffed Pink Panther and the head of a bull Pinata from my 27th birthday party.  I my wife, my two cats and my dog loaded up bound for Seattle.

The trip is 1,100 miles and takes around 21 hours depending if I or my wife is driving.  When we were moving to LA it seemed like 11,000 miles and 41 hours,  I spent the whole time bouncing in my chair my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel trying to control this 17 foot behemoth behind me I couldn’t wait for this incredible unknown before me, I would have driven straight through to LA if I could have.  A new apartment, a new city I’d spent less than seventy-two hours in, no job, no family and everything was an exciting mystery.

Now moving back to Seattle things could hardly have been less similar, the trip seemed like a handful of hours and felt like we were just driving to Santa Barbara.  I was full of reservations and I spent the entire drive looking back at where I spent exactly three years of my life where I spent the bulk of my non college  adult life.  It was where I learned to live without family and all the ways in which they can be there to protect you.  It was in LA where I learned how to make new friends from scratch and make them my family away from my family.

 
I’m a nostalgic person and as we left Los Feliz (definitely the coolest place in Los Angeles) and drove through Glendale and Burbank and Valencia our truck pointed due north on I-5 a course we would not deviate from until we reached a crossroads in the Kent Valley and take the 405 for the last 10 miles of our trek home.  I found it surprisingly easy to forget things like the shitty overpriced food, the insane drivers, the completely narcissistic culture and smog.  Instead I lamented the loss of my neighborhood, the sun, my friends and the thought that just around the next corner could be something completely new and surprising.

  Seattle is still full of unknowns but they are less thrilling and honestly a little less unknown.  Seattle is home and is full of friends and family and despite having no jobs it was safe and quaint.  

I lived in Seattle for 26 years before I packed up and left it for three and a new beginning in Los Angeles, now I am moving back to Seattle for a new beginning again.  There were plans and there were goals I’m finding that rarely I follow either.