Happy Anniversary to Me

Today marks my three-month anniversary in Los Angeles.

Last week, during my adjustment to the new job, I pondered whether I would choose, if I were able to do so, to snap my fingers and be back in my hobbit hole in Austin, at the old job, with this move to California having been nothing but a dream. I would say it was a toss-up. It's definitely been an exhilirating change, but I'm already worried about having lost the nice benefits I had at my old job. I'm also down about 10k, which in the large scheme of things is not that bad, but, considering my current salary and cost of living, I will have lost a lot more money than that by the end of the year.

Since I held onto my condo in Austin, I feel like I have one foot still there, and I'm not sure if having that "escape hatch" is such a good thing. From a practical stanpoint, yes, but maybe not from a psychological standpoint.

I have a date today and some flirtation possibilities at work, but out of the eight dates I've been on since moving here, I suspect that three of them were gay. Almost 50%! Not so encouraging.

I've also been overcome with anxiety and insomnia. For the most part, it's not conscious anxiety; I'll be happily watching Entourage, not a conscious concern in my head, only to turn off the TV and then lie in bed, completely unable to fall asleep. I just think it's unnerving to any human being to move to a new city without family or tight connections there. And I have a bunch of problems to solve that, when taken together, have led to an "overload on the system."

I've been exercising like a fiend as a way to cope. One of my yoga teachers, who looks like Frank Black (if you can imagine), said yesterday that L.A. is the "yoga capital of the world," with more yoga instruction than any other city. Or something like that.

As a positive effect of all this stress, I've lost about ten pounds.

I talked to a couple of Austin friends this week, and they mentioned the same old events that were attended by the usual suspects, and it didn't make me want to return. So I guess I just need to have faith that my new life here will fall into place somehow.