Beginnings

My best friend, Bailey, is moving to Alaska today. She spent last summer working up there and fell in love with it. She found a house, bought furniture and a car, and shipped most of her possessions there a few weeks ago. After a two week trip visiting friends and loved ones across America, she's boarding a plane later today to begin the next chapter of her life.

I feel so incredibly happy and excited for her.

I don't know many people who can pick up and move to such a different part of the world. It's always been one of the things I admire most about those who can/do. So while I know you don't need it, good luck up there and I can't wait to hear about all of your adventures!

Endings and Beginnings

I've been terrible about writing lately. I've been even worse about knitting.

The past two years have been incredibly challenging for me.. graduating from law school, falling in love, studying for the bar exam, moving across the country and back with my family, getting my heart smashed, looking for jobs, accepting a job for my family, working my butt off in that job, getting over the past and falling in love again.

I've spent the past two and a half months working full time for my family and part time for an attorney up in Big Bear. Now that my one-year commitment is just about over, I'm beginning to transition into full time work up there and just a few days per month down here.

I've found a beautiful house that I love and can't wait to move into. I've already started moving some of my legal books up to the office. I'm setting up all the different services I need to fully move in after I get back from the east coast.

These changes are exciting. And scary.

Within the first month of working at my current job, I was unhappy and knew I was going to be throughout the rest of it. I was correct. And yet, despite knowing that, despite knowing that I needed to find something else, getting back into my own profession, I was paralyzed by fear and uncertainty. It felt easier to stay in an unhappy, and at times seemingly abusive, job than to go out and face the rejection that felt like was waiting for me.

I'm so incredibly lucky that my new position worked out the way it did because I never would have looked for this type of position in the location where it's at. I would have looked back in LA, or at least in the LA county area and would have missed out on the great opportunity I've been giving.

Instead, I get to live in an adorable house in an adorable town. I get to work with a partner who respects and values me, with secretaries who free up my time to work on substantive matters. I get to work directly with real people and I get to help them solve their problems. I get to go to court. I get to work on a variety of different matters. And at the end of the week, I get to spend the weekend with the most incredible man I have ever met.

I'm incredibly grateful for the lessons I've learned during this past year. I'm also excited and hopeful for the new challenges I am going to face in this new phase of my life.

Books Read and to Read in 2012

I love reading. I've been a bookworm since I moved to NJ at age 11. I spent countless hours at my elementary school's library, avoiding the jeers of other students who teased me relentlessly about being Luke Locursio's crush.

I thought about majoring in English Lit at college but knew there was no way my family would allow that. Sadly, I only took one lit course at NYU-- Eastern and Central European literature (during my Cold War kick sophomore year).

I took a rather long reading hiatus during law school-- too much legal reading to do on a daily basis. By the time my day was through, I would feel so exhausted that I would watch a little tv and then pass out each night.

I started reading literature again last year, though sporadically. I tried to document what I read but I've always been awful at consistently sticking to.. anything, really.

I love the idea of reading a book per week. But even then, I can't commit to a single book at a time.


A smattering of the books I've read in 2012:
Story of a Marriage (1/2012)
1Q84 (1/2012)
The Imperfectionists (1/2012)
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson (3/2012) <-- April Bookclub
Yaclav and Lena by Haley Tanner (3/2012)
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins (3/2012)
The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides (4/2012)
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Wu (4/2012)
Room by Emma Donaghue (5/2012) <-- May Bookclub
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (5/2012) <-- Listened via mp3
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (5/2012)

Currently Reading:
Candide by Voltaire <-- listening via mp3
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy <-- reading on nook and listening via mp3
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Southern California: An Island on the Land by Carrie McWilliams


Still Left to Read:
On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Cloudy Wednesday morning

I really need to start getting out of bed earlier.
My favorite part of the day is quiet morning.
No one to talk to.
No one to listen to.
Just me.
And breakfast.
And cup after cup of tea.

I've been absent from this space for a while now. Busy with work. With love. With family.

I need to make some big changes soon-- move away from this sheltered (albeit demanding and stressed) circumstances and move back down to the big western city. To challenges. To stronger friendships. To more fun.

A letter to the ghost of love past

Dear Nick,

A year ago, I was heartbroken. Barely able to force myself to take a few sips of water, let alone eat any actual food. I couldn't sleep. I would fluctuate between feeling angry and breaking down into tears every few minutes. I could not imagine what my life was going to look like since I had finally committed myself to one future with one person. With you.

In another 2 days (from one year ago), I would talk to you again and clarify the reasons you wanted to break up with me. Because you found yourself talking to any girl who would smile at you and it was 'only a matter of time before something happened with one of them.' Great, classy guy.

In another 4 days (from one year ago), I would go out with Gwen and a bunch of her friends to celebrate us completing the CA bar exam. Once at the karaoke bar, a certain 32 year old screen writer from Long Island would spend the entire time talking to me, get my number, and then spend the next month and a half trying to get to me commit to a relationship with him.

And so began my (almost) year of single-hood. I went on many dates during that period and kissed many frogs. I was not searching for love-- just trying to put back together my smashed heart. I spent most of the time feeling angry and resentful. I tried to cultivate my female relationships as much as I could (though I've always been awful at it). I tried to reconnect with my family more.

As cliched as it probably sounds, I was pretty happy being single. Doing the things that I wanted. Going where I wanted. Spending time with whomever I wanted. Not having to worry about the repercussions of my actions on a significant other. It was a very selfish time period and I ended up hurting the feelings of three good men, despite repeated warnings that (1) I was still recovering from heartbreak, (2) I did not want a relationship at the time, and (3) I was not going to want a relationship in the future, either.

And then I started writing to a man on a dating site. Who kept sounding better and better in each of his messages. Who I eventually met for coffee in my favorite place in LA and who turned out to be exactly the way I hoped he would be from his messages.

I very much was not looking for love when I started writing to him. I certainly wasn't looking for love when I first met him for coffee. Had I known what would result from those simple actions, I'm not 100% sure I would have reached out and taken those first steps. I wasn't ready for love then. I'm not completely sure I'm ready for love now.

I do feel that he is supposed to be my person. And I want to be his.

One year ago, I thought that you had ended my future when we broke up. I could not imagine what I would do or who I would be without loving you.

Today, I am so grateful to have lost myself so completely when dating you because it forced me to reevaluate my life, my interests, and my expectations over this past year. It forced me to be a complete person, one with both positive and negative traits. It forced me to start listening and acting upon my own desire. While this past year was... challenging, I'm grateful for it because it honed who I am today. And it prepared me for a real, balanced, and mutually supportive romantic relationship.

So thank you, Nick, for breaking my heart so completely back in February of 2011. I'm happy to say that I'm doing pretty alright.

I hope you find your happiness, too.

I hope you find your true love, too.

Whatever you decide to do, please, please, please, break up with Angela if you're not in love with her. It's not fair to keep stringing her along when she so clearly loves you. As much as it would hurt to have her heart broken, it's better to struggle through that and heal than to continue to love a man who doesn't love you back. Trust me on this one.

Love,
P

I can haz sock!

My first (sober) sock! Going cuff down was so much easier than going toe up. Kitchener stitch wasn't that bad either. 

Can't wait to start the second sock tomorrow!

Sock Progress

I still can't believe that I'm actually knitting a pair of socks! Properly. From the cuff down.

Although I complained about the slow progress at first, I must say that I'm enjoying the experience quite a bit. Maybe sock knitting will become a regular part of my knitting regimen.

Not much to report beyond that. Work is busy as usual. I see my friends. I date. That's pretty much it...

Snapshots from my life...

 Christmas 2011

My nephew's 7th birthday party

View from my desk

Two of my four adorable nieces and nephews

Sock knitting

Sock knitting progress

Matching fingerless gloves