I started this blog on July 1, 2016. I remember landing in Japan the night before wondering where I was going and why I was going there and not knowing anything except that I needed to go. I navigated the Tokyo subway system tenuously, using my allotted 200 MB allowance of overseas data and racking up a $750 bill in phone charges in 3 days. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I SHOULD see Tokyo, so I put in some halfhearted broken efforts to explore. Mostly, I walked. I sat. I tried to be. I hoped something good would happen. I hoped I would snap out of it.

On my way over, I stopped in LA and saw my friend Lily who picked me up from the airport and took me to lunch at a yummy restaurant in Manhattan Beach. “This is where you should live. You should get a small house here and just sit.” By “here,” she literally meant Manhattan Beach, not LA. I’m not so far off now though here in Venice. She told me to start a blog. I got on the plane to Japan. I got off the plane in Japan. I slept. I woke up. I went to Starbucks. I started my blog.

I’m a different person now. I don’t even know that person anymore. I don’t feel that person anymore, though I can see her from a distance.