It’s not lost on me that I’m writing this seated at a coffee shop in Hillcrest, fresh from a visit to Balboa Park with a friend of two decades. I’m visiting San Diego for the first time in five years and it’s as fantastic as I remember: just a bit balmy when I stepped off the plane at eight o’clock yesterday morning, already regretting I’d only be here for thirty-six hours, the harbor and rolling green hills and palm-trees-galore totally unchanged. I booked in a double tattoo appointment a few months ago and it seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. Post appointment and hangouts with my friend (and missing out on a few because of the timing), I wish I’d made it a real trip and had three more days.

Alas, that’s life. I’m grateful to even be able to make the trip all things considered. The last time I was on a plane, I was one of thirty-seven people, making the mid-pandemic journey from London to San Francisco because I realized about two weeks after my last post that it was time for another major life shift.

It’s worked out in that I never left California because I didn’t like California. I, in fact, rather love California (see last post for reference). I spent a month in Sacramento before relocating back to the Bay Area, drawn there unexpectedly by an opportunity with my old District Manager to take over a store in Santa Cruz. Living in such a recent past haunt makes the three years I spent in London feel more than a little like a fever dream – a hyper-realistic, life-changing, fantastic fever dream – and being in San Diego again is like another small dose of the same confusing nostalgia. It’s welcome, though. I’ll take any reminder that here or abroad, the places I love aren’t going anywhere. (For now, at least. This is a no doom-scrolling zone.)

Talking with my friend this afternoon at the park, the phrase “life is a journey” came up. We were joking, but we also were not. We were talking about how life happens and you do things and once they’ve happened, it is what it is. There’s no right or wrong about it, and all you can do is change what you have now if you’re not happy about it. It was an excellent topic of conversation for someone that’s gone through the intense volume of change I have in the past four months.

I keep getting Instagram and Facebook memories of a year ago, two years ago, three years ago (the most painful, since they’re from my recent arrival to the UK and filled with obnoxious captions like “can’t believe I get to live here FOREVER”). I made the right decision, moving back to California. But I miss London and my life there – desperately, sometimes. As another close friend of mine is fond of reminding me, two things can be true at once. It was the right decision, but sometimes it’s still hard.

I got to go to my niece’s preschool graduation and mermaid-themed fifth birthday party. I can go out to lunch with or go spend my day off with my sisters or my mom, wandering thrift shops or discovering the best fried chicken sandwiches. I laid by the pool with my best friend and drank margaritas, and remembered for a moment why it’s so easy to not travel when you live somewhere like California: sometimes just the backyard can feel like a vacation. I’ve got a car and drive through pine-filled mountains every day on my way to work, and live in a neighborhood with a coffee shop I can walk to – not to mention the fact that I get to share the place with my boyfriend, a miracle in itself because I’ve known the guy for fifteen years and life is just really fun (and fantastic) that way sometimes, and things have just, well, worked out.

When I look back at the last three years, I am nothing but proud. If there is anything I’ve learned, it’s that you can think you know exactly what you want and what’s next, and turns out – you 100% do not. And that’s okay.