Don't Hate Me 'Cause I'm Indie and You're Punk

Bits & Pieces (the second)

Social Life/BiSC:

In the last week, I met Adam, Sara and Bob, which means, along with Rachael, Dominique and Nicole, I have met 10% of the people I'm going to Las Vegas with in May. And I have to say if everybody is both as awesome and attractive as those six in real life, it's going to be the most overwhelmingly amazing experience I've had in a long time. Also, I'm really gonna have to bring my A game.

I made some moderately stupid decisions in the last week so that I could meet those people. And by moderately stupid, I mean I went out twice in the last week once knowing I was getting sick and once knowing I was still sick and should be sleeping instead. The result was working with a fever last Sunday and feeling likc if I had to stand for one more second past ten hours of work I might die for most of the week. But you know what? That's the great thing about being an adult. I consciously made those decisions knowing they weren't the best idea and I accepted the consequences and the only asshole to blame was myself. And then I spent pretty much all of yesterday in bed, spent today at AMNH and wandering through Central Park, came home, took a nap because that's what my body said we should do and pretty much feel like a human again. So I think, overall, worth it.

CA v NY:

It turns out you can take the girl out of California, but you can't take the California out of the girl. My pastry cook is giving up cigarettes, soda and fast food for Lent and everybody tells her it's crazy while I'm like "that's awesome, it's really not that bad". And not to pat myself on the back for not having bad habits I never picked up, I just call that normal life. I think most of my friends back home do too. It still weirds me out that the chefs I work with eat fast food. In fact I'm so not used to people eating fast food (with the obvious exception of In'n'Out) that even non chefs eating fast food surprises me. I mean, this week I'm concerned that I'm eating organic yoghurt from humanely treated cows and bread made at a coop because they come all the way from California and I think that's a perfectly normal way to think about food. I guess it's all relative to what you're used to. Hella NorCal, yo.

Boy Stuff:

I really will make out with anyone when I'm drunk. Pretty sure Sara asked me if I would make out with like 5 different people the other night and I said "yes" everytime. Sober me would not have said "yes" that many times. Sober me is now back in charge of my love life. The "don't get drunk on the first date" rule that Michelle gave me is now in effect. Despite being single for a whole year my friends have been shocked the last few weeks when they've asked about my dating situation because there currently is none. At all. Haven't gone on a date in three weeks. There are no boys that I'm currently regularly sleeping with. (I know, it's weird for me too) I am however, currently writing 6 paragraph messages to a guy on OkC that I genuinely want to be friends with. Or more. But most of the time when I go on dates from OkC I'm kind of forcing myself and I feel like I'm putting myself in such a contrived situation because I don't know if I would always go on dates if I had met the guy IRL whereas this guys seems like somebody I would actually hang out with in the real world. So that's possibly exciting.

New Year's Goals:

I'm currently losing weight at a rate of approximately two pounds a month. Did you know I was trying to lose weight? Probably not. Mostly because I think it's the most boring thing ever to read about on other peoples' blogs and because I'm a small person I feel like people will want to punch me in the face if I complain about my weight. But look y'all, I'm a chef which means my weight has actually been somewhat of a constant struggle since I went through culinary school. It also means part of the reason I don't weigh a lot more with what I eat is because I am on my feet cooking for ten frakking hours a day and lifting fifty pound sacks and running up and down the GD stairs. Anyways, with some portion control and stopping to make myself eat actual food instead of just randomly putting whatever cookie is closest at hand in my mouth when I realize I'm starving, I'm slowly but surely losing weight and starting to feel a lot better about my body and not hate the way every piece of clothing I put on fits. Which is good, because I really don't have enough money to buy a whole new wardrobe.

Dairy is the devil. I've gone back to pretty much cutting it out entirely and feel so much better on a day to day basis.

I'm still obsessed with Blue Print Cleanse juices but have mostly just been incorporating them into my regular diet instead of going all out cleanse. I would like to do another three day cleanse soon though.

Random shit:

I read all three books in The Hunger Games trilogy in two days. I would've liked it better if they hadn't been written in such a way that it only took me two days to read them. This is why I don't usually read YA books. Good stories aren't enough, I want to read that sentence that rings so very true my heart aches, that expresses an emotion so perfectly I'm knocked on my ass. I will say that it was a good story and will probably make a pretty enjoyable movie.

Best for last: My new work schedule is 10 am-8ish pm which means I might get to have a social life again. I've only had it for a week, but I think I might love it. I'm still alternating between having Sunday/Monday off and Thursday/Sunday off, which is really weird but the new hours might make it manageable.

One is silver and the other gold

 A year ago, yesterday, I broke up with the guy I was living with and told him I was moving to New York. The next day, my birthday, was marked by emtpy closets, packed boxes, anxiety and excitement.

You might say the moment I made it in New York was when I was asked to come back to my job as a sous chef. Manhattan sous chef. There's a lot of us, but the jobs aren't easy to come by, the competition is fierce and the commitment required, is, well, kind of insane. I'd say this is the moment the city had decided to give me an opportunity to stay, that it wasn't quite ready to chew me up and spit me out like I hear it's done to so many others. New York can be a difficult city, I love it, but I understand why it isn't for everyone.

But still I struggled, because as much as I want to pretend the absolute commitment to my career is all I need in life, it turns out, I really like people to be in my life too. I made a close work friend who moved to Connecticut. I turned internet people into IRL people but struggled because my schedule is so different. I slept with people for the wrong reasons, but also sometimes for the right ones. And I was lonely. A lot.

This month I went back to CA to visit. It was a whirlwind of bar crawls, restaurant visits, girls nights and family time and I was not lonely. And it was good, but at the end, I was ready to get back to New York. Ready to be HOME.

The week since I've been back has carried on with the same crazy social life I had in California. Birthday shennanigans and tweetups and silly pictures on facebook. I know it won't continue at this pace because part of the reason is that we've got a lot of January babies in my current friend group, and I'm not actually sure I can maintain my current pace of spending more nights in January out than in, but it feels like the moment where I've actually made it in New York. I'm not fully immersed back at work yet, so it helps that I'm not an exhausted mess, but right now I have a lot more confidence in my ability to make and maintain friendships than I usually do and I'm pretty fucking excited.

(Part of my feel good is also all the BiSC love going on, but I'll talk abut that more in another post)

So here's to my favorite city, staying connected to the people I love at home and new friends that are starting to not really need that "new" qualifier.

Twenty six is going to rock. I've decided.

 

There and Back Again

I got back Friday from nine days in California.

Nine days under the stars and redwoods.

Nine days forced to slow down.

Nine days reflecting, examining, turning around past choices in my head. Not having regrets, just playing the "what if" game. I felt so removed from Sonoma County. In eleven months, I changed in some way that made me absolutely certain that that is not my life anymore, that I really was just visiting. It made me think of all the decisions I've made that could've left my life in different places and it made me really examine the life I have now.

What if I hadn't broken up with Jacob? Would he have broken up with me by now? Or would we, nine years into a relationship, actually be planning a wedding instead of just assuming we'd spend our entire life together? (I know, I know, we'd probably both feel miserable and trapped but that's not how the "what if" game works) I once knew with absolute certainty who I was going to marry. That's so foreign a feeling now, yet at the same time I feel like I'm always chasing after it. I don't know what "it" is anymore, but I know I'll know it when I feel it. I think.

What if Che had realized what an ass he was sooner? What if all the apologies he gives me now had happened two years ago? Would I have forgiven him? Would we still be dating? What if I had accepted his wine cellar proposal instead of moving to New York? Would I still be working at a group home, going to school and living perpetually feeling slightly ill at ease? Or would I somehow embrace being a country wife? There was a moment once where I thought I could do that (before the wine cellar proposal, by which point the moment had long since past), settle down where I could raise my own animals and grow my own food and turn it all into a meal each night. While I still love those things, I just can't picture myself in that life anymore.

What if that guy I'd had a crush on since 8th grade, my Harry Burns, had made a move sooner? What if I had been dating him for a year, instead of Matt, when Michelle offered me a room here? Would've I have accepted her offer? Or even, what if he had just asked me to stay in those last two weeks before I moved? He never would have, and that's one of the reasons I love him so. But he's also probably the only person who could've given me pause. I didn't even try to see him while I was in California. I don't know why. I don't know if I was afraid that that relationship never having a chance to happen would turn into a full blown regret if I did see him or if I'm just a pansy and couldn't bear the thought of the disappointment if we no longer connected in the same way.

I think I've been so focused on relationships because they were so often the thing I let hold me back but also because I felt like the reoccuring theme of my visit was "You work how much?! And when?! When do you have time to go on dates?". It's easy to forget here that there are plenty of people in other places only working 40 or 50 hours a week. People that work normal hours, have normal social lives and go on dates that aren't either in the middle of the night or at a normal time but on a Monday. And mostly my answer was "I don't" because that's an easier answer than "Well, there's this one guy I've been sleeping with but he's kind of an ass and I have no desire to date him and he has no desire to date me and it's kind of perfect in an absolutely no emotion sort of way and then there's also this other guy that I've had a crush on since July and I don't really know where we stand at the moment because I'm too afraid to ask because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get the answer I want but I really really like him and it's fucking up what few dates I go on because I keep comparing".

(Sidenote: I know where we stand now. It definitely wasn't what I wanted. We definitely did have that conversation in a bar at a friend's birthday on my first night back in New York. So. There's that. To steal a phrase from my grandma, my heart could use a bandaid right now. But it doesn't need stitches, because we were never really dating, so it can't really warrant more than rejection hurt and disappointment it didn't become what I wanted. Basically, I'm sad, I'm not sobbing into a pint of ice cream sad but, still, sad)

I've been chanting the "my career will never leave me" mantra for a year now (thank you, Lady Gaga) but I'm starting to realize how much I've let it take over. I used to give up myself in relationships to the point where I no longer could define myself as somebody outside of it and now I don't know who I am outside of my job. When I'm off work for too long I start to get uncomfortable because I don't know what else I do other than work, laundry and sleep and also because I end up spending too much time with myself. My focus has been too much on work and not on building friendships. I'm not entirely sure how to change this yet, but I know I want to. I know I value having relationships more than my career. I also know I focus on my career as a way to hide from putting myself out there and taking the emotional risks making new friends requires.

Once again, I'm striving to find the middle way instead of always going to extremes. I'll get there.

Someday.

I'm going going back back to Cali Cali

I've made the roundtrip coast to coast journey somewhere between 25 and 35 times now. One to two times a year almost every year of my life. SFO to JFK and then back again. Except not this time. This time it's different. JFK to SFO and then back again.

It's weird. It's just so weird. I keep thinking I need to take one last walk through Central Park, that there must be one more museum to fit in before I get on the plane that will take me to tacos and In'n'Out instead of pizza and bagels. I've gone into "No, please, don't make me leave" mode, forgetting that in ten days I'll be back. It's hard to believe I've been here close to a year now. It's hard to believe I have no intention of moving back to California. But both those things are very true.

I'm starting to get a little going home anxiety too. So many things I want to eat. So many people I want to see. So many people. After a year of not having time for anything much other than work and sleep, the idea of so much socializing is a little daunting. And of course there's the "What if I've somehow changed in a way that makes everyone hate me? Or me hate them? Or what if they've all changed?" anxiety. There's also the family anxiety. Just y'know. Family.

And part of it is that I feel so removed from my life in California. I was always living with one foot out the door anyways. The idea of slowing back down to California countryside pace seems so foreign. Slowing down always seems foreign to me. I think that's the part of my nature that will always be more comfortable here than there. Not just Sonoma County, but the Bay Area in general.

Don't get me wrong, I know I'm going to have fun. I can't wait to see more than three stars when I look up at night, for the redwood trees to be towering over me and to see that craggy coastline. I'm ready for going out with my boots on. Whiskey and semi drunken tractor rides. Wine tasting. Windy backroads. Girl nights. COOKING. I have a feeling I'm about to do so much cooking and baking, and I'm oddly thrilled. I really can't emphasize enough how much I miss cooking for people I know instead of strangers. Produce and slow food. (I'm sorry New York, but until you get over fine dining and learn how to do the slow food bistro properly, I will always be on the California side of the coastal chef battle.) Ace pear cider on tap. All the alcohol specific bars in Petaluma. Avoiding going into Sebastopol like the plague except maybe to play shuffleboard at Old Main. Ok, fine, I probably need a burger from Hop Monk too. And, I mean, just all the food in Berkeley. Seriously. All of it. Gregoire's, Cafe Fanny, Barney's, Fonda's, Rudy's Can't Fail... Probably more places I can't think of right now.

I'm excited to go. But I'm also excited to come back. That's a feeling that never existed when I was doing the trip the other way around. And that feeling, makes any of the struggling, any of the loneliness, any of the complete and utter exhaustion I've put up with for the last year, completely worth it. I knew last January that if I didn't move to New York, I would regret it. I'm thrilled that that's a regret I don't have.

And for the record, I will only ever say "Cali" when quoting song lyrics. I promise I'm not that lost to you yet guys.

Home is whenever I'm with you

2011 was the year the city that was my second home growing up became my home. I suppose technically, it was always my first home being born here and all.

It was the year I learned to stop missing my father constantly because, somehow, this place, where memories of him are everywhere, soothes and comforts me immensely. I think it's also because 2011 was the year I was forced to only live for me. I had nobody else's needs to put in front of my own and taking care of myself made me miss having somebody to take care of me less. Also, I know my father would be proud of the things I've done this year.

It's the year I learned how dependent I am on codependency, how hard it is for me to just take care of myself and live my life only for myself. I mean, deep depression, in the bell jar, crying jags, barely able to function break downs. The leg up us children of addicts get on others with depressive tendencies, is that we're extremely adept at hiding emotions and will compulsively make ourselves do things if otherwise we'd be letting others down, even if it means hiding in the bathroom and sobbing every ten minutes. So, hi, Al-anon and therapy in 2012. Let's do this.

I learned the thing that nobody tells you about adulthood is that, yes, you can eat pizza and beer for dinner whenever you want, but you'll get way more excited when you have time to cook a real meal. Also, you will become that person that obsessively makes their bed every day just so they can crawl into it and feel cocooned at night and that thinks fresh sheets are god's gift to mankind. That you will wake up some mornings and just HAVE to clean your room before you can even think about doing anything else and that you will get really excited when you have the time and energy to go to the grocery store. Maybe this only happens when you work ridiculous hours, because this week I discovered that if I only work eight hours in a day, there is just SO MUCH TIME to do everything, unlike last week when I broke down and paid to have my laundry done because it just wasn't going to happen otherwise. But I kind of think being an adult is when you wake up one day and realize you're thrilled to change your sheets.

I think adulthood might also be when you move to new places and your friends are the ones that come to visit instead of your family, presumably because your family a) knows you'll be fine and b) puts the responsibility of plane tickets on you. Also, possibly, because your family thinks you're just going through a phase and will come flying back soon. Sorry, family, here for another year and even after my lease is up, I'll probably be here. You're just going to have to come visit if you want to see me more than once a year.

On the flipside, this was the year that I started to almost understand when people don't want to impulsively move across country because "All my friends and family are here". I have met some really great people this year. But, also, it's really hard to meet new people in a new city where you're going only knowing like four people even if the city, itself, is familiar. And it's double-y hard if you work long ass hours at weird times. I feel like I'm kind of starting to collect a friend group but it's obviously not the same as being at home with people I've known 10-22 years.

Yes, Lara and I have know each other since we were three. And that's probably the hardest because Lara is basically my sister and knows to laugh at me when I go on long angry rants and buy me potato puffs when I'm sad but to not poke at me and make me tell her what's wrong unless I want to. And we're both not great about picking up the phone and calling, so I also don't ALWAYS know what's going on with her and can't try to fix things and did I mention I have a problem with codependency?

Right now, even though I know I'm going to be ready to come back to my Manhattan skyline when it's time, I cannot wait to be surrounded by people that know how to read me, that I'm not always keeping some sort of wall up when I'm around and also, that I know how to read and where I stand.

2011 was also the year that I got back into the things I love. A month didn't go buy without me practicing yoga, sitting and listening to a new album or finding a day to obsessively read for hours, even though it meant I couldn't have clean sheets. 2011 was a lot about opportunity cost.

My word for 2011 was "choices" I wanted to keep all options on the table. For 2012, I'm using "stability". I don't need all the options. I want to focus on the good choices I made and expand those into creating a life where I am not sick and tired all of the time, where I have familiarity and routine, where I really solidify my relationships and I continue to live my life on my terms instead of latching onto somebody else's. I'm excited to keep becoming me. Hopefully a better me, even.

I am small but I am strong

Quick practical note: This December I'm participating in #reverb11. Last year I only managed about half the month before the questions all started to seem like they were asking the same things in different ways. This year there are so many lists of prompts that I'm hoping I'll stay inspired through the entire month. I'm doing it because making time to write daily is something I really wished I did on a more regular basis and obviously it's easier when you have a whole internet community supporting you. Basically #reverb11 is like my work out buddy for writing. Also, it's that New Year's-y, birthday coming up soonish time of year so I'm probably going to be spending a lot of time all up in my head over analyzing the last year and making decisions about the new one anyway, and some of that stuff needs to get out of my head so I don't go insane. The posts won't always be eloquent or long, but they will always be true.

So...

Reverb11 Prompt 2: Who are you? Describe yourself.

Alana Margaret. Baker. Pastry Sous Chef in the most competitive food city in the world. But in my head, just a baker, creator, recipe writer.

Quiet, shy, sensitive, bookish but if I have my way you'll never know it. I never outgrew those things, but I got better at pretending, which I guess, is a lot of what growing up is about. A sometimes broken, bitter, midnight crier and sometimes the one who has weathered much and come out more whole than anyone had any right to expect.

I cling to schedules, routines, normalcy the way those of us with hectic childhoods do, trying to keep control, always. Hating when I'm not in control, always. Life has a way of not letting you be in control. It's tricksy like that.

Blunt, harsh and honest. To a fault. But once you're in, once you make it under the layers, there is nothing I wouldn't do for you, nothing I wouldn't give. Happiest as a care taker, food maker, present giver.

Small but curvy. Dark haired and light eyed. Fair Irish skin. Thankful for Eastern European cheek bones adding definition to a round, dimpled face. Rosy cheeked and dark lashed. Arms and hands covered in burn scars and knife nicks.

Not so secret lover of all things living and adorable. Small children (not babies, they still mostly look like aliens), puppies and kittens especially, though if I thought a baby polar bear or tiny penguin wanted to cuddle me and I lived in the right climate, they'd be right up there on that list.

I find equal comfort in the quietness of museums and the way words string together. Sentences over stories. Phrases get stuck in my brain the way songs get stuck in other's. Flavor combinations too. Repeating until I find a space to let them out.

Alana Margaret, almost twenty-six. New York City born. California raised. New York City returned. Baker pretending to be a Pastry Sous Chef. Reader pretending to be a writer. Unabashed liberal. Rule follower and authority hater. Goody two shoes with a foul mouth. A pile of contradictions, just like you, and at the same time, not at all.

Not even a little bit.

Start spreading the news

Where did 2011 begin?

THIS is where 2011 begins in my mind.

It began with stepping through the doors at JFK to snowbanks and sunrise. My heart singing, "home, home, home" as it always does when I return to New York City. Especially in the winter. New York in the winter is my New York. The New York I miss. The New York of my childhood.

It began with me looking for excuses to leave a relationship that was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

It began with opportunity. An offer. The offer. The one that let me pack it all up, leave it all behind. The one that let me move to the city that I can still say is the only place I've never wanted to leave.

Hopes, dreams and parachuting blindly into a new, but much smaller, safety net.

That's where it began.

It had a lot to live up to.

Autumn in New York

This is what this time of year looks like where I'm from. The hills are brown from the dry Summer heat and the leaves of the evergreens, they never change. My expectations for New York Autumn were high. I was looking forward to walking the streets on crisp clear days as red and gold leaves swirled around me. I was promised over and over again that Autumn was THE season in New York. Imagine my disapointment when before the leaves had even changed, I walked outside to fat snowflakes falling on my head. First it rained most of Spring and now it's going to snow before I've even seen these fabled leaves?

Thankfully, today proved me wrong. Low 60s. Gorgeous. And all the red and gold leaves I could want.

My empire of dirt

Numb.

Numb, is the real answer if you ask me how I am.

I'll probably tell you "fine" or "exhausted," I have a number of stock answers that are somewhat true. I am both fine and perpetually exhausted. I'm always fine. It doesn't matter. Five layers down I'm sobbing in the corner. But on the surface? Great. Just.

If I hold it together for another 60 hours my roommates will be out of town, I'll be in the midst of a four day weekend and I can quietly and conveniently just break down. I'm living two seconds from a breakdown all the time right now. I have been for weeks now. But I'm good at being numb. I'm good at walls. And I'm really fucking good at self destructive behavior.

Please, I mean, being a drunken floozy is better than being numb right? At least, at least, there's some human interaction. At least I feel something other than going through the motions.

But I've chosen being numb. Because when I look, when I let myself dive below the layers, below the  brick walls and titanium plates, I can't stop, I can't stop crying. I miss home. I miss my family. I miss having somebody to come home to. I don't know how to live like this. And I feel like a failure because I don't know how to exist without codependency. But I also have no desire to actually move back home. I want to visit, but not live there. I just want the ocean and stars. Just for a minute. A minute would be enough.

Here, here I'm doing so well careerwise. That's supposed to be enough. That's suppposed to be everything I want.

But it's 2am, and I let myself relax enough that the tears just won't stop.

And I can't figure out what I need to change.

But please let me feel something other than this.

Anything.

Anything other than this.

The city seemed to have no middle ground

"If I open a restaurant in Charleston, I'm dragging you down there with me"

"No. No, I'm not going anywhere," I shook my head, shivering in the wind coming off the river, smiling at the cars racing over the Queensboro Bridge.

"I've wanted to live here my whole life. My WHOLE life. I've never flown into JFK or La Guardia or even Newark without this overwhelming feeling of being home. At the end of every trip I've seriously considered just not getting on the plane the next day. I've never been so sure I wanted to stay somewhere. I always want to move. I always want to go. Right now, I just want to be right here. This is it"

"Wow, you're actually living your dream right now. I didn't realize it meant so much to you"

"Yeah," I say, starting to tear up a little "I'm a fucking sous chef in New York City, that was the dream".

It was a dream delayed, cast aside, forgotten. A dream I thought would never happen. A dream I though I no longer wanted (at least the chef part).

When Lara asked me if it were surreal, living here after wanting it for so long, I had to think about it. It took a while to sink in that I was really here to stay, that I wouldn't have to get back on a plane. Sometimes when I say "I'm a pastry sous chef in New York City," it still sounds a little crazy, a little like something real people don't just become but then I realize "I'm a chocolatier in California wine country," sounds even less like a real life story.

And really, my whole life is a little like that.

Hi, I'm Alana Margaret. Born in New York. Raised in California. Drug addicted parents, one now dead in a motorcycle accident, one now a clean and sober truck driver. Raised by my grandparents. Self reliant, self motivated, goody two shoes. I've helped build a school in Thailand and volunteered at one of Mother Theresa's hospitals in New Delhi. I've taught English to high schoolers in Turkey. and then come home and somewhat impulsively gone to Culinary school. I've been a chocolatier, worked at my dream bakery and been a chocolatier again. I've worked with teenage drug addicts. I've moved across the country two weeks after being offered a room.

I have never done anything I wasn't passionate about. And I think, I think that is what I love about this city. I love the pace. I love working hard and playing hard and walking quickly. I love being in the rush, feeling like I am surrounded by other people that are living their life with purpose, whatever that purpose may be. However different it may be from mine. I push and I push and I push myself, and here, that just seems like the norm. I don't feel like some alien that doesn't see the value in wearing fleece and flip flops every where, who doesn't just want to be comfortable and content.

I don't want to be content. Not yet. I'm too young to settle for contentment. Right now I still want passion. Sustainable passion, but passion. I still want to be excited about life. And here, I am excited every time I see any of the myriad bridges over the rivers or the lights of the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building. Or when the bakery I'm working at gets mentioned in the New York Times. (Umm, the Carnival Blondie and Butterfinger Gelato are totally ALL ME. How frakking cool is that?! No, I don't have any modesty, I'm a chef, modesty gets you nowhere in this industry.)

In the back of a cab with a friend a couple of month's ago, going over the Pulaski Bridge, he stopped me mid sentence,

"I'm sorry, but just look at the skyline. It's amazing. Isn't it amazing?"

"Yeah, yeah it really is"

And I didn't care in the slightest that he had interrupted me, because I was just so excited that somebody else was that awestruck by this city. I don't even remember what were talking about before that. I just remember that it made me incredibly happy and really want to kiss him.

(fine, I was a little drunk)

(fine, yeah, I probably kissed him)

(But I would've felt and done that same things sober)

(Shut up, I've been really good at not being a drunken floozy lately! Really good.)

And that's it. It's magic, this city, for me. It's keeping a girl with perpetual wanderlust happier than a clam. It's sending me to bed exhausted and sometimes cranky and achy, but fulfilled.

Yes, there's still more that I want out of life, but right now, this is good. This is the right place, at the right moment. This fits. I fit.