Today marks my two-month anniversary in London. It’s also LA’s birthday. Happy birthday, LA! While I miss some things – LA, my home, my cats, certain people, certain comforts, I am happy to be where I am. I needed a break. Burn out is real, y’all.

Between teaching and grading and seeing plays and reading things and talking to LA using the Facebook messenger app (which means that sometimes there’s an absurd delay, which some days strikes us as funny and some days strikes us as something to be extremely annoyed by while harboring a secret suspicion that it is somehow the other person’s fault, this technological glitch) I have plenty of free time to think. I think about things like: there are so many people on the planet. Truly. So many. What are we all doing? What makes some people somehow special and others just… regular? Are we all special in some way? Is that really possible? I think about things like: is there safety in numbers? Violence seems to happen, regardless. Blame. Exacerbation. Helplessness. Where are these “numbers,” really? So much of the time it feels more like “every man for himself.” I think about things like: what’s next. I don’t know. And in the past the not-knowing would have caused me to panic. It still does, a little, at some point each day, but: not as much as it used to. Because I’m finally starting to learn that there are some things you just can’t plan for. Like: the rest of your life.

It’s nice to have landed somewhere I feel genuinely respected for what I have to bring to the table. Like: my colleagues are really fucking nice and they are excited to have me on their team and they don’t seem to be faking it. It’s especially nice knowing that I earned my place here – knowing that I got here based on my own merits, not because I already knew someone here, or knew someone who knew someone here. Not because I spent years sucking up to an in-charge-type-of-person in hopes that I would someday be offered a job here. Not because someone felt sorry for me, or felt like they owed me, or felt like I was the devil they knew. But because I’ve worked hard and am good at what I do. I have and I am. Does that make me special? No. Not really. But that’s okay. Because I feel special. And that’s enough, sometimes.

Go rogue.