I'm glad I took some time to do introspective, emotional work back in July. Shortly after the last post here, on July 19, I got a new teaching job in Los Angeles, traveled fairly directly from the Minnesota woods to LA to find a place, signed a lease, flew to Phoenix on a Saturday, drove back in a U-Haul the next day with all the stuff from storage, and moved in.
The teaching job has involved a ton of onboarding red tape, since the school is affiliated with UCLA, and my new faculty orientation started this week as well. The first day was in person, with tons of distancing and masks, etc., and the rest of training for the month of August are via Zoom.
The apartment is total chaos, as I need to buy shelving, and take care of some other basics. The car needs tires, 120,000 mile service, and a new rear bumper (because I backed into a rock). The tasks and training for the new job are endless. I also foolishly agreed to do a webinar, and I'm still in major revisions of an article on its way to publication. I feel like the universe basically just pulled the plug on introspection.
Back in Los Angeles! The two years that I lived here in the early 2000's were great in some ways, nightmarish in others. The entire experience led to sobriety for me, and at the time, I knew it would be challenging to stay sober living here, so I moved back to Santa Fe. But, after 16 years sober, it's feeling good, living here again. It's a crazy ass city for sure.
But I lucked out on a great one bedroom for a relatively affordable rent, 3 miles from work, 3 miles from the beach. The neighborhood features every imaginable service and hosts a range of food from around the world (Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican (Northern and Oaxacan), Persian, Italian, American, El Salvadoran, all within walking distance). Wrangling the transition to California is almost like moving to another country, since the systems in place are so labyrinthine. But I'm managing, one day at a time.
It's a ten minute drive to the beach in Santa Monica. A ten minute drive to work. It's oddly subdued and strange in the city right now, due to the pandemic, but I don't need to go anywhere much, since my entire job is virtual at least until the end of September. I've been maintaining contact with everything I learned in the hermit passage from December 11 until late July, and it feels like the trip through Hades is either in a completely new phase or, miracle of miracles, might be drawing to a close.
Time will tell.
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