California Love, Reprise

The ride is scenic. We follow a wall of rock; we pass over hills and through valleys. The land is incredible -- it makes the term "grounded" seem relative, 'cause you just cant stay grounded here: you can't help but lose yourself in dream. It is unlike anything I think of when I think of America. The trees twist in ways that make you forget you're close to desert and rock and sea all at once. I put my feet in the Pacific Ocean and it is perfectly cold, and power courses through my body. I feel this strange emptiness -- like I've never felt anything in my life until this moment -- a mix of nostalgia and excitement. I feel alone but on my own. There's just nothing like it on the East Coast. 

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I started writing this post on the Amtrak from San Diego to LAX, closing my five-day adventure in Southern California.

My trip to SoCal was filled with laughs and memories -- from the San Diego Zoo to just about every bar in Pacific Beach. But what I took from it was the lifestyle, the feeling. We went out with locals and wandered; and I found that this was a place I could, and would live.

My parents warned me about this. They knew I would fall in love with California and wouldn't ever want to leave, but I honestly wasn't prepared for this. When I realized we were really leaving California, I felt physical pain in my heart -- that sunken knot in your chest you feel after a bad break up or when you deeply miss someone you love.

And I love California, in the purest sense of the word.

I am forced to face it as I pass by the hills and freeways, houses built on top of and into hills. It reminds me too much of Italy this way. I find myself thinking/feeling the same things I did when I was leaving Perugia. And also like Italy, coming home -- home to the cold, stagnant, stability and dependence -- feels like paralysis.

Living at home means ultimately having to answer to someone, which inhibits what you do and how you spend your day. You can't just do as your please. This inevitable consciousness of your parents' presence rekindles that adolescent dependence on their approval -- the inability to do something, something significant, without permission. Therefore, you suddenly feel incapable of making decisions on your own. You've regressed to childhood.

Of course coming back from Cali was difficult because it was a beautiful place and a good time. But it was that much harder because being there was also a glimpse of my life as I once knew it: doing as I please, being young and being surrounded by other young people, laughing nonstop and constant stimulation. And what better a place to do so than Southern California, where fun feels effortless.

However, my new found love has me even more torn over an issue I've debated now for years, since I left Italy actually: the importance of career opportunity versus love for your land. Yes, both of these can coexist, but in many places it does present a problem.

When I met with the WWD contact in L.A., she told me that if I am most concerned with becoming the Editor at a magazine, I should go to New York. The greatest job market, especially in journalism, is in New York. But if I still don't know, if I am open to possibility, to just go somewhere I love. Well, I love San Diego. I want to live there, but there is hardly what you'd call a job market, especially not for me.

So the question I ask myself lately is, which is more important: greater job opportunity or land? Is it your profession or your place of residence that will bring you closer to fulfillment? I assure you that the answer will be different for everyone; and I suspect that most people will, like me, struggle to find an answer that satisfies them. So, I present you all a little something to muse over your Thanksgiving food coma... What do you think is most important?

A happy holiday to all...

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