I can't say that I really expected it. When I left cali, I was at my wit's end. We were barely past the months-long drizzle that is winter in Northern California. I was burned out and broke, ready for a change. I was moving on to The Next Thing, to writing, to Tennessee, to a summer at the ranch eating lots of salmon and salad and riding around on a golf cart, trying not to melt. When I went back last summer and hung out in Oakland, SC, and San Francisco, it was exquisite and crisp and gorgeous. Even walking through the neighborhood above Bay, down the city streets with my friends, still marveling at the number of flowers, I was gleeful to be getting sunburned, to break a sweat. Because the sun seems different there. I know now how people are willing to endure roommates in their 30s and 40s, or debt, or crap jobs just to stay. To me, now, Cali is like an ex-lover. The one I crave, the one I keep coming back to because it made me feel alive. Delicious. Comfortable.
