During my first year in Los Angeles, I would often gaze out the window of my dorm room at Loyola Marymount, perched on a bluff overlooking the hissing sprawl of the city, and feel the deep, sick sense that I was missing out on something. Somewhere out there, somewhere before my eyes even, in a shadowy basement, or in a glass house on the hillside opposite me (my imagination was a little limited, I admit,) was The Most Interesting Place in the World, and I was maddeningly close to it but still not a part of it. I was under the impression, like so many people can be about careers or designer handbags or other people, that as long as it remained out of my reach, I would never be able to realize my full potential as a human being.

(Spoiler Alert: At that time, and maybe for a good many years after, I was still slowly tearing away the religion I had grown up with, like a thousand little band-aids, and still carrying around a ton of guilt and denial about an awful lot of things. In a way it makes sense that I would transfer the idea that there was One True God to the idea that there was One Most Interesting Place in the World.)

As much as I wanted to know about The Most Interesting Place in the World, I don’t think I ever wanted to be a participant; in my fantasies I was always in close orbit around some bright center of the universe but never touching it, observing, in some ways knowing what it was to be it better than it did. And yet, I would still want to come away from the experience with a souvenir of singe in my hair and heat in my ears. (I’ve always instinctually craved knowledge over experience, the fact that they’re usually a package deal is both convenient and annoying to me.)

The biggest secret you can tell someone, or at least the most damning, is of an intention to better yourself.

So here we go again, Los Angeles. We’ve been here before; this is the part where I say that things are going to be different, that I’m smarter and stronger or some other adjectives from a Christina Aguilera song, and maybe I am, but I think more importantly, this time, Los Angeles, I’m not going to hate myself. I’m not going spend every waking moment wondering why I’m not at the Most Interesting Place in the World, I’m not going to hold every person who takes an interest in me in suspicion: What sad path has led this poor soul to this totally lame conversation with little old me? I’m going to go to the party without harboring some secret expectation that it has to define me, I’m going to leave the party without worrying that I might have offended somebody. I’ll be living off a few freelance gigs and unemployment checks, and sleeping in my best friend’s living room and riding the bus, and I couldn’t be more excited. Who gets to live in their favorite city and get paid to write and doesn’t have to worry about car insurance or office politics or I dunno, not having enough time to write? Fucking badasses, that’s who.

I once wrote that I wished that you liked me as much as I like you, Los Angeles. I now realize that I wouldn’t have been so madly in love with you if the feeling hadn’t been at least a little mutual. I had to leave last summer because I can’t live on a vague, imagined sense of goodwill from a metropolitan area, but when I come back tomorrow I’m going to do my best to behave like somebody who expects and deserves that goodwill, however vague or imagined. And, y’know, a part-time job would be cool, too.