Post-Grad Plans

For those of you that don't know, I'm moving to Los Angeles at the end of the summer. My job with City Year Los Angeles starts on September 1, but I have to be there a little bit earlier to do registration and whatnot.

I started looking for apartments tonight. I'm still outside the 60-day window, so mostly I'm just getting a feel for neighborhoods and price ranges. I know that things are ridiculous, so I guess that's why it's not freaking me out too badly. Four of us CYLA people are going to be living together. We're looking for a two-bedroom in Korea Town. The cheapest apartments are 1300 but usually they run in the 1500-1800 range and up from there. Between the four of us, that'll be about half of our monthly combined income. Woohoo AmeriCorps jobs and volunteer pay.

I don't know why moving out to Los Angeles makes me want to panic sometimes. I mean, I know that it's totally understandable. Reasons that it should freak me out:

• Rome, GA (population: 45,000) is the largest place that I have ever lived. My hometown, Tifton, GA has a population of 28,000, which is about 3/10 of a single percent of the size of LA. There are more than 10x the amount of people in my hometown in the five square miles of Korea Town.
• This is the first place that I'll have lived outside of the normal education plan. I lived at home and then college. This is the first place where I really have to take care of my self.
• I don't know how to survive in a city. I really don't want to be in charge of apartment hunting and whatnot in my group, but my type-A personality just won't let me take a backseat.

I have the fear, sometimes. Other times, I fully believe that this is going to be the best year of my life and that I'm built for LA. But, when I have to work on the logistics, it makes me panic.

I think that it makes me panic because I'm afraid that I'm going to fail and end up doing something that I don't believe in because I couldn't cut it out there. I've never really failed at anything that I've really wanted to do. In fact, I usually am spectacularly successful. I have high expectations for myself...and I don't want to disappoint myself or others.

My hometown breaks down like this: 60% are perfectly content staying here forever, 30% screamed so loud about getting out in school, but they had no follow-through and they ended up back in Tifton, broken, pregnant, getting married, dreamless, goalless, and full of compromise. The last 10%...well, we're the one's who went off to school...the one's who left town. Of that, maybe 4% of us will get our degree. And maybe, just maybe, a couple dozen of us will leave the state of Georgia and go on to fantastic things.

I want so much more than where I come from. It's a nice place to hail from, but you have to go somewhere else to hail from there. So, I guess what I'm saying is, I'm going to have to fuck my fear. Because I can't stay here...and I've made a commitment.

As a wise woman once texted me when I almost killed some people outside a Carraba's: It's a challenge now, and we don't lose challenges.

Damn straight.