About ten years ago, a great show that died an early death about a dead girl working as a grim reaper called “Dead Like Me” was dead on with a dead pan quote (which I promise you, doesn’t include the words ‘dead’ or ‘death’):

They say time flies when you are having fun.  What is also true is that when you are not having fun, time still flies.  It just flies coach.

This blog marks the four month anniversary to my arrival in California, and I thought that deserves some time for me to collect things and see where we stand in the madness.  Taking a moment is a good thing in this situation because like the quote suggests, time has flown.  When I look at the calendar, I see that it really has been less than 10 weeks I’ve been in the house I am renting – which is still more time than I spent in my ‘temporary life’ hotel room.  Not only I somehow sold my Boston condo since vacating it, my credit rating already went all funhouse mirror in reaction to it already – and that stuff takes time.

It seems, however, like I have been at this for far longer than four months as well.  So much has occurred in a so little of time that the whole seems greater than the sum of the parts.  So often I try to describe my life as if there are ‘chapters’ in a book.  When I take a hard look at the last four months, there seem to be chapters here as well.  Mostly because my living conditions seemed to transition so sharply — from the Condo life of Boston — to Hotel life in Burbank — to a quiet house in quiet Montrose.  Even now, as I start ramping up my search for a new permanent home, I am looking outside of Montrose (due to lack of availability mostly) so it seems yet another chapter is closing.  Yet if I just focus on the living situations, it only seems to tell half the story.

Since getting here, I’ve made new friends.  Made new different friends.  Dumped away old new friends for new different friends.  And actual ones, not just Bartenders who pick up my name from looking at my credit card — and on that subject Starbucks baristas remember my name here (which never happened in Boston).  I can get around without GPS … mostly … at least more reliably than getting around Boston after 2 years there.  Work has blossomed for me as well; now that I have grown and learned some things, I am able to make a difference here – like really making a difference, after only a few months.  Also, I have hobbies.  Of course one of the big ones is house hunting & visiting open houses, but still … HOBBIES!  PLURAL HOBBIES!

Granted, if one was to follow me around and try to describe me in three words they would likely be ‘boring, drunk, pathetic’; but I should get some slack until I fully get myself into some kind of life here.  That’s kind of the point, though.  It seemed like most of 2016, especially much of the back half of it, my world didn’t seem right.  Changing jobs, moving to California, it first appeared as though it was the switch I needed to make things right — but truth be told, I found that it isn’t an on-off switch, but a dimmer that takes time going from dark to light.  Yet, I can’t help but to think that the changes that came did so at the right place for me.  If they came too fast, I don’t know if I could grasp or like them.  If they came any slower, trouble would have followed it.

All that I can really say is that looking at my life these past four months – time has flown.  If it is true that when you aren’t having fun that time flies coach, I’d have to admit that time must be flying first class these days.