I get asked a lot about what I like better: NY or LA, always a tough question. This piece on ThoughtCatalog.com (“I Don’t Want to go Home”) describes how I feel a year after making to move from New York to Los Angles. At first I HATED it and now it’s my home. That’s not to say that where I grew up pretty much my whole life has been replaced in a mere 10 months, it’s just a case of what has become normal.

In the beginning, I was miserable. I was all alone in a city with no friends, no car, no clue. I came home in late October and December during my first semester, and then just for 3 days during Spring Break. Each time it got a bit “weirder” to be back home. I’m used to busy roads, 6-lane highways, and feeling like I’m always on vacation (palm trees and sun galore).

I’m not sure what May 2013 has in store: will I stay or will I go? All I know is that for now, I’ve made a small, growing nest in LaLa Land and have come to actually enjoy that nest growing stick by stick.

Most people I know are transplants from somewhere else. It doesn’t matter what brought us to the city. College. A job. Somebody we loved. A dream. A hope. Boredom, restlessness. The fact that whatever we were searching for wasn’t in the place we left. Whatever the reason, we’re not there anymore, and we’re here now. Often, we’re here alone. Often, only a phone number with a familiar area code connects us with our childhood homes. We create new homes of roommates and friends, though it’s safe to argue that you often can’t entirely replace one with the other. You can grow new roots, but that doesn’t change the fact that you began from somewhere else, and replanted here. And everyone always wants to know where somewhere else was.”