Dear Los Angeles Skyline:

It hasn’t even been a year yet, but i think I’m ready to move on. I feel like there is a change coming, or at least, I am ready for a change, even though I’ve found a place here, am building up more and more reasons for staying.

It’s that commitment-phobia rearing its head again. I was going to say “its ugly head,” but I’m trying to think more positively about it. I’ve always thought of it as running toward something, not running away. I’ve always had a love affair with running.

I want more. That’s my problem– I can’t stop yearning to see more, to do more, to write more, to do more of so many things.

At the moment, I want more buildings, I want to be in the middle of more density, I want to expand my memory to include more cities, more visions. I’m afflicted by wanderlust, this insatiable kind that is typical of people my age. Mostly I’m afraid of ending up like George Bailey, always wanting to go places and see things and do things and never actualizing those dreams. The greatest fear in all of us, I think, is allowing our dreams to just flounder as dreams. I’ve been changing my mindset about dreams: I’ve been thinking of them as goals, and drawing out plans in my mind of how those goals can be made real.

I always keep in mind, though, that George Bailey built a wonderful life, that was the whole message of the movie. The people he touched, the changes that he catalyzed, the people he influenced, that is what matters most, in the end. I am just greedy, I suppose, and I want it all.

I’ve found community here– people who care deeply about this city, people who’ve lived here for years and seen the changes that happen to you, people who have incited change. How can I build community when I am always thinking about where I’m going next? I feel like there is still so much left between us, so much that needs to be done, so much that I can become a part of, but there’s that fear of missing something somewhere else that nags at my consciousness even as I revel in everything you’ve offered me.

I keep planning escape routes even as I send down more roots into you. I guess I’m sending those roots down because there is something inside me that wants to be here, that wants to settle here, that wants to see this place grow, that wants to nurture it. When I leave, there will still be a piece of me here, just like there are pieces of me in Bellflower, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Irvine, San Francisco, all the places I’ve been before, some of them places that I’ll go back to, some of them places that I’ll never live again.

Such is life. It’s change, and growth, it’s coming and going, it’s learning, it’s remembering, it’s returning. It’s all of those things.

I’m going to come back here. I want to come back here. I will come back here. But I know that I need to leave for a while. I don’t want to be apologetic about that, but it’s been said that it’s better to apologize after the fact than regretting never doing the act. Apologies are much easier to swallow, in the end, than regret.

So this is my preemptive apology. I’m sorry that I’m going to have to leave, but it’s something that I have to do. I’m sorry that I keep becoming more deeply entangled in you at the same time that I seek ways to leave. I know you understand, because you are always changing yourself, there is always something rumbling inside you, you are always getting reinvented. I’ve been watching the transformation from within, I look forward to watching the transformation from somewhere else, and to coming back.

Peace & love,
N