This is the three year anniversary for me and my current apartment. It’s the longest I’ve lived in the same place as an adult.
Part of me wonders if I should be disappointed that my old wanderlust was replaced by moving and shaking of a career variety instead of a new-city-new-neighborhood variety.
But everytime I ask that question I say no. I like who I am and where I am and I feel like what I’m doing is worthwhile.
Everytime I help researchers find what they need, whether they are 10 or 65, I know I’m in the right place.
Yesterday I helped middle school aged kids locate online resources for their National History Day projects. One student was researching a mid-20th century TV program’s impact. She was incredibly articulate about her subject, though her mother said multiple times that they picked a “light” topic this year; as if there was some unspoken need to excuse the choice of a pop culture topic.
She didn’t need to excuse her students’ project, especially to me. Everything is important. Everything has meaning and value. It’s all connected in the domino run that is life.
When I first moved to Los Angeles I went to AAA and asked them for all their Los Angeles maps. I cut them up so the maps fit against one another where one ended and the other began. I wanted to master the roads and freeways – as a child of the suburbs I was programmed early on to view places through windshield glass.
I don’t have any LA maps on the wall anymore. There’s still uncharted territory in my mental map of the city, but this is home.
I’ve found my corner. I feel a mix of delight and disgust that I’ve settled into my routine and that I like it. I am right where I am suppose to be – at least in this very moment.
The sublet room I lived in when I first moved to Los Angeles as a 21 year old. A tiny box of a room right off the living room. It was full of someone else’s furniture and not very well decorated, but what was important made it on the wall.
Illuminated Past 