2002-03-10 - 5:36 p.m.

First, I GOT A JOB!!

And, its a GOOD ONE. And they PAY ME WELL. Its as an "administrative assistant/communications coordinator" for a non-profit organization here in LA. Half secretary, half WEB DESIGNER, and COPYWRITER for their print material and EDITOR of their newsletter!!! Just exactly what field of work I wanted to get into! And the best part about it is it is working for a wonderful wonderful organization that helps children and poor families -- so I feel great about who I'm working for and helping. I am working for someplace that HELPS PEOPLE , and I'm NOT working for THE MAN!!! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!

So now that I have a job, so much stress is out of my life. I can stop the job hunt, I can stop panicking about money and a place to live, because its all working out just fine. . .In fact, BETTER than I could have planned or imagined!!

I feel so LUCKY for getting this job -- Los Angeles is the kind of city that eats people up and spits them out and then tramples on them until they are the spots where gum used to be on the sidewalk. But the city has been so good to me! I found a job within 2 months of living here, and its a great job, and its amazing because I had absolutely no direction or plan going into this, I was just totally winging it. Things could have been scary, but instead things worked GREAT!!!

As for my living situation . . . I am living with Jim and La in their one bedroom apartment still, and of course I love them. Things were a little wonky between us the past couple of weeks, I think all the stress of La and me job hunting and then starting new jobs and all being around all the time in the apartment was getting to us all. But then we had such a terrific weekend hanging out together, and now we're getting along as real friends instead of clinging to one another as life preservers in this city -- and so the pressure is taken off and it feels great. I just genuinely dig Jim and La, and I love it when things are good between us.

Now that I have a job, and soon will have money, I can start looking for apartments . . . I want to live by the BEACH!! This is a dream that I know I can realize!

For once in my life I'm actually thinking of what to purchase for the apartment, and thinking of putting down some ROOTS. I've never done that before. In Atlanta, I always thought of my living situations as temporary. For instance, I slept on a mattress on the floor for a year and a half because I didn't want to invest the extra 50 bucks in a bed frame, because I felt I would be moving at any time. But now, I'm actually thinking of buying furniture FORREAL. I feel so grown up.

Also, I had this amazing epiphany a couple of weeks ago wherein La and I went to an alumna meeting of our college that was held out here. One of our old professors flew out here to give a lecture for the event, and the lecture was about pilgrimage sites around the world. And it just reminded us both what it is we were missing in life, and who we were, and what we really wanted to do . . .

I want to be a COLLEGE PROFESSOR!! I mean, I've always wanted to be a novelist and a writer -- and writing and publishing novels is something that professors do. But they also get to TEACH and to TRAVEL and to commune with like minds -- it is of course the perfect thing for me -- but when I graduated college I didn't consider it because I was so burnt out on school at that time that going back to grad school seemed outrageous.

In addition, my life was so full of drama in my personal relationships that the excitement of that clouded my judgement on the world. When things died down for me, and I had time to chill out last year, I realized that life can either be BORING or EXCITING. And for me, keeping myself separate from other thoughtful people, keeping myself out of the loop on learning more, means that my life was pretty much destined to be one of working a string of jobs and partying on the weekends. But I knew there had to be something more, and I didn't know how to get out of the loop and into a path in life that allowed me to really do what I want to do: Write, Teach, Travel . . . And I didn't know how to get the life I wanted, where I get to talk about things like pilgramages and learn more languages etc . . . And I realized that the key to that life for me is

GRAD SCHOOL. I got to get my ass into it!

So now I have a job, my best friends, the beach, and a real plan for my life. I have wanted this for so long -- and I finally started on the right path and it feels soooooooo good.

As for my love life . . . Of course I still haven't heard from Pat. I'm still sad about it. I thought that two months might lesson my feelings for him, but they haven't. Little things remind me of him all the time, and I still think I have never met someone as all around amazing as him. So my plan is to hold out as long as I can and then finally break down and email him in a month or two and get back in touch so that we can have a correspondence.

But really one of the BEST things of all, even better or at least as wonderful as all the other good things going for me right now, is that I met some FRIENDS. The king that are going to be close, long term, intimate friends. In this city, that is the RAREST thing of all.

I was in a bar on Valentine's day, and I just happened to run into this bunch of beer drinking guys, four of them, making alot of noise in this sedate little pub. We were sitting so close it was impossible not to talk to them, allthough I really didn't want to at the time.

Turns out, the dudes were from ALABAMA. They had last lived together in MACON GEORGIA, and had even frequented the bar that my highschool friend Sarah's husband works at, and they knew him!! SMALL WORLD.

So I take thier number down on this tiny tiny scrap of beer bottle label. MIRACULOUSLY, I didn't loose it. I called them a week later and invited them over to meet Jim and La and hang out with us.

These guys turned out to be WONDERFUL. They all just moved here less than a month ago from the South -- so they get along famously with me and Jim and La because we are all Southern, we all spent our time in Georgia and Alabama and have the same sense of the world. Having a community of Southern folk out here is something so fantastic and important I cannot emphasize this enough. PLUS, the guys are all graphic artists, for comic books and cartoons, they really have their act together, they're COOL AS HELL, and SO FUN!! But the best part is, they all have such good hearts, they're just so genuinely NICE.

We've hung out the last 2 weekends since, and the friendship is totally cemented. Since I'm new to the city like they are -- we all met at the perfect time. I'm so happy to know them.

The only possible kink in the friendship to all this is that, of course, I got drunk and had sex with one of these delightful men last night . I really couldn't help it. He was hot. We were beyond drunk. It happened. And again this morning:)

What's cool about it, is that he's 30 so he's a man about this, it wasn't awkward at all. Also he has a girlfriend in Georgia that he was totally guilt-ridden over about it this morning, which means that he's a nice guy because he really cares for her and feels bad, and it also means its a given that this was a one night stand, which means we really enjoyed it but now there's no thing about whether this will continue or not, because it won't. And Jim and La and me and him (whose name is also Jim) hung out with him all morning and things between us were fine.

And the sex was really sweet and good and just what I needed. He made me feel really sexy. But it also made me realize how great it was with Pat, and so I am reminded that I would like to be in a budding relationship and have the kind of total spiritual amazement sex with someone like I had with Pat. This wasn't like that -- but it felt good nonetheless.

I really don't think this is going to prevent us from being friends, or break up the group at all -- it would be different if he and I were starting something, but we're not, it was just today and it was good.

I will write more about Jim2 later, because I have genuine affection for him and I genuinely dig him, he's an interesting character and he's going to be a long term close friend.

Ok, I gotta run . . . going out for dinner with La!