Riding the lift to my apartment yesterday, I was wondering, marveling I guess, about how I got there. How did I end up in this lift in this house in this small English town? A small town of cafes, and corner shops. There’s a bingo hall, two actually, a karaoke bar, beach huts, pubs, of course, and a pier.
These days I stare out of my windows onto the big blue horizon. I watch the tide come in and out and the people of Worthing strolling the promenade. Simply enjoying life.
There’s wind and rain, plenty of it, and the opportunity to sling on a raincoat and boots is the perfect antidote.

This year has been fast, super-accelerated, but it has felt like a thousand years. All the big life things offered up all at once, and, just like that, 24 years of Californian sunshine are behind me.
I wondered if I would, panic, experience regret, anything to indicate that putting my entire life in a container on the ocean was a huge mistake, a decision I made with a brain full of grief and empty of logic. But, searching around inside my head and heart, everything seems to be in its right place.

I think about LA often, of course, I see places I know on TV and smile, I want to lay some kind of claim.
I like throwing American words into the pot, some of them are just better, I can’t imagine I will ever say mobile-phone, and ‘apartmen’t is just nicer than ‘flat’
Being here I notice an absence of fear. Leaving my house I don’t brace myself, I don’t sit on the bus imagining where I would hide if someone had a gun. I am no longer stepping over people on the sidewalk (how was that ever normal for me?) I don’t see crazy coming at me down the street, and I have to laugh at the price of life in Los Angeles.
I don’t miss the competition, I don’t miss feeling completely overwhelmed by almost everything. I don’t miss my terrible landlord, I don’t miss the cracks in my bathroom tile or the holes in the bedroom window.
Maybe I am running away God knows I’ve done that before, but on a good day, with a clear head, this feels like a good fit,. bite-size, doable.