Hello again!

I feel as if a new greeting is necessary, as it has been quite a while since I have done one of these. (It has also been almost as long since I have written in my physical diary, but I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about my supposedly casual undertakings, so let's agree that that is neither here nor there.) On January 1st, when I just so happened to both write my last RE: column and purchase said diary, I blabbered about my Ins and Outs for the year, trying to stay in the UK and making sure I didn't feel like a failure if I had to come home.

Well, let me catch you up.

None of that came to pass.

It all began on New Year's Eve in my twenty-eighth year of being single. For the first time in a long time, I found myself surrounded by new faces, and, for the first time ever, I spent the initial moments of the new year watching the various fireworks displays around the city from the safe and free vantage point of a North London balcony. As the sky lit up around me, I realized that the past few weeks I had spent feeling so unmoored and out of control of my own life had done me no good. If I wanted to stay in London– and spoiler alert: I do–the only person with any real say in that is me.

And so I made a major decision. I had to make sure that even if I did end up on a plane back to The States in six weeks. I wouldn't feel like I had failed myself. I woke up this morning and made a plan, not about how I was going to stay (That one is easy: apply to any and all job postings I can find that may or may not sponsor a visa), but about what exactly it was that I wanted to accomplish with my life, what would I want to be known for– real big picture stuff. I decided to start a diary to tell the truth about Sydney Bolen—the whole truth and to keep myself accountable.

You know the scene in Love Actually where Emma Thompson says, "Joni Mitchell...Joni Mitchell is the woman who taught your cold English wife how to feel." I am convinced that if the movie was remade today the artist she would be listening to is Taylor Swift. Taylor has songs for every emotion. There are tracks that make me feel in love (Daylight), sad (Bigger Than The Whole Sky), angry (My Tears Richocet), nostalgic (Fearless), and everything in between. But my favorite feeling that she was able to invoke is hope.

Right now, on the eve of The Ones That Write Themselves being published, I feel very much like Taylor's protagonist. I am reaching out to ring the doorbell about to show up at the party, and there's nothing I can do but see how it goes from here. I may have ideas of how I want it to go–who am I kidding? I definitely do– but from here on out, it is out of my hands. Tomorrow, this story will cease to be only mine and will become everyone else's to either love and cherish, ultimately ignore or even pick apart. That's a very scary thing to know you voluntarily are going to experience.

Okay, from the jump, I realize I may have made a mistake. If you read the title and got excited because you thought I was participating in cuffing season this year, I apologize for misleading you. Despite being on Hinge for about a month (or maybe now it is actually a thing I am choosing out of spite BECAUSE I am on Hinge), I am still as blissfully single as I was before I sacrificed a small slice of my ever-dwindling phone storage. What I meant by labeling this entry as I did is that I finally understand why the late Autumn and Winter months have this affectionate–or dreaded–term.

If you haven't watched 'Love At First Sight' on Netflix, let me say I cannot recommend it enough. It is a perfect adaptation of a novel I loved as a teenager called 'The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight' by Jennifer E. Smith. The story centers around Hadley and Oliver, two young adults who happen to be on the same flight from New York To London, and the role fate plays in their budding relationship. While the nods are a little more subtle on the page, Jameela Jamel wonderfully portrays a personified–and quite sarcastic–version of destiny as she takes on multiple occupations, including flight attendant, bus driver and even generic passerby during the film's ninety-minute runtime. Jameela is the first voice the audience hears, and while she is more of an omniscient narrator than a secondary character, her role affected my worldview more than I anticipated.

*This is an account of the roughly 30 minutes I spent "reading" in Hyde Park

London was not supposed to be this hot, especially not in September. Don't get me wrong, I was enjoying the warm weather, but the wardrobe I had packed for my six-month stay was appropriate for the Fall/Winter period I was expecting. The promised 89 degrees Fahrenheit high for the day had sent me and my black jumpsuit into hiding, corraled in the corner of a coffee shop off the high street where we hoped it would be cool. Despite my best efforts, the white flowers that adorned the cotton fabric still darkened to damp cream as I toiled over a project on my computer and peered at passersby through the open door. As I worked, the fingers of my left hand absentmindedly played in the puddle that formed in the wood grain of my table over the course of the day as the iced matcha at its center changed from emerald to mint green.

Hello from London!

I have been in this "new" city for almost two weeks, which is wild because it seems like two days. I was in Dublin for about half the time and getting settled the rest, so that feeling is somewhat rational, but when I woke up this morning, everything felt very official. In fact, I dubbed today my first "real life" day (It was supposed to be yesterday, but then I found out Dermot Kennedy was playing All Points East in Victoria Park and needs must.). From here on out, I will be out of vacation mode and pressing into all the things I came here to do: more interviews, blog posts, self-publication prep, rom-com exploration, Book 2 inspiration, and more that I can't wait to share. But I don't think I'll be busy at all.

Here's some unsolicited advice for moving to a new country: prepare to be entirely and wholly exhausted. Granted, that may be the case for moving any non-local distance after you've made a life for yourself somewhere, but I wouldn't know. The physical toll of starting a new chapter aside, my final days in Los Angeles were jam-packed with work, activities, outings and last gatherings. Since the end of July, I have been faced with a near-constant barrage of goodbyes. And, for someone who is not fond of endings, no matter how temporary they are or how exciting what they lead to may be, it has felt like an all-out war on my senses and mental facilities.

The past few days, Los Angeles has been bright and sunny. Its warm weather has enticed its citizens to greet one another as they bask in the Summer heat and meander in and out of air-conditioned businesses and eateries. The few clouds that have been unable to resist taking to the skies have been left to drift over a crystal-clear backdrop that slowly fades to pastel pinks and peach tones as evening draws nearer. Even the traffic has seemed smoother than the mandated bumper-to-bumper I am accustomed to trudging through on my commute home. Surrounded by all these things, it's hard not to feel as if the City Of Angels is playing all her best cards, willing me to stay, or, at the very least, question my decision to go.

It has been a little bit over a month since I got this proverbial ball to London rolling. All at once, it seems as if these last four weeks have flown by and passed at an infinitesimally slow pace. There is so much I have to do, and so much I am not quite able to do yet. My non-essential furniture has been listed on Facebook Marketplace, but with a month left in my apartment, it doesn't make sense to begin putting my life into boxes just yet. I've continued looking for a new space in the UK, but most short-term leases start in mid-to-late July, making my late August arrival an unwise choice for any well-meaning landlord.

Not to start this off in the most “me” way possible, but I've spent the better part of an hour trying to come up with a different introduction, and I can’t, so here it goes. In the second refrain of his new song Heaven, Niall Horan says, “It's hard to be a human // So much to put an answer to // But that's just what we do.” Granted, it is not the most groundbreaking of statements on its own, but within the context of my life at the moment, the lyrics felt like a warm hug and a punch to the gut all at once. Life is hard. But we have to figure it out. The good news is it can be anything we want. The bad news is it can be anything we want. A simple fact I have always known and thought I had a pretty good understanding of. But, it turns out, ‘anything’ should be bold, underlined, capitalized, and italicized. In case you haven’t been told lately, if you aren’t happy with your life, you can do something else. By happy, I don’t mean content; I mean truly happy. If not, you can do ANYTHING else.