Everything is bad.
Let's remember the good times.
Like everyone else, I’ve been glued to my phone watching the Los Angeles wildfires unfold. On the news, on screens, texting, and messaging people I’ve known and know out there, and downloading the Watch Duty app while not living in a fire-prone area of the world. It is heartbreaking. It is the way I felt coming back from Asheville, and three weeks later the exact area we visited and stayed in was washed away by Hurricane Helene.
Austin and I drove down part of the PCH last month. We had to avoid Malibu due to a fire. We couldn’t go much past Big Sur due to the road work on the 1. The highway has been sliding slowly into the ocean because of you guessed it, climate change.
Humans are an aggressive species. Over generations, removed from the “natural world” and thinking we can build one better than nature can. Incredible. Perhaps we made a mistake in evolving much past Neanderthals.
The outrage online seems at an all-time high. I don’t consider myself “chronically" online”. I don’t have TikTok. I watch mostly animal videos and my YouTube algo is mostly ASMR and cooking videos. But I see what others share to their stories and timelines, I browse Reddit while watching television in the evenings. I know everyone wants to blame the other for what is happening whether it be Trump, Biden, climate change, conflict in the Middle East, natural disasters, healthcare, Ozempic, women’s rights, childless cat ladies, or pineapple on pizza. Everyone is fucking triggered. Everyone is mad. Everyone is sad. Everyone is tired of stuff happening.
I think there will truly be a time when I part ways or at least go easy on social media which is sad because I’ve loved it since MySpace (neigh Xanga/Diaryland/AIM). I spent most of my 2006 summer internship updating my MySpace page and I suppose 20 years later it wouldn’t be the worst thing to leave it all behind for IRL. I’d probably read more.
Back to Los Angeles, I can admit I’ve still harbored dreams of moving there later in life. People talk a lot of shit about it but I think it is one of the coolest places on earth. If I had money, I would move there, no question.
In 2010, I stayed in LA on my own to meet some friends, fell in love a little with one of the friends, and sort of got swept in the dream of a 2000-mile long-distance romance through the movie “Going The Distance” (a Justin Long/Drew Barrymore classic) and 500 Days of Summer. It was Tumblr days, things were reblogged and feelings were easy in time differences. Nothing ever really came of the romance, more of a friendship in the end. We had dinner in Ohio before the pandemic and it felt like a full-circle moment. To sit across from the California dream in my hometown. I’ve never regretted it. Honestly, it changed me in nothing but good ways.
Getting to see LA through the eyes of natives is key I think. You can be a tourist but I loved the feel of dive bars and stripmall donut shops. Being stuck in traffic never made me upset. I’m dying to see another show at the Troubador and have good tacos.
Maybe someday I’ll make it out there - or I could stay in Ohio until I die. Or a secret third thing? Reminder: we’re still doing no fantasy land this year.
That is what’s been on my mind this week/last.
Take care of yourself this week.
Stay warm.
Call a friend.
Stop putting off that doctor’s appointment.
Goodnight Substack.
