LB & I decided to move back to LA back in January of 2021 after she was offered an amazing job opportunity at CHLA, a decision that was difficult for me because of how much I’ve loved (working with) my BFA & MFA students & how much I valued my colleagues at BG, but also easy in other ways since we’ve lived in LA for over ten years, always coming back here over & over again. At some point, & I’m not quite sure where the timeline lands exactly, LA & not Chicago became our home even though we’re both from Chicago & even though we met each other in Chicago with a little help from MySpace. But that’s another story.

During the last pandemic wave in the winter of 2019/2020, I was completely stuck in Ann Arbor, constantly fighting depression, immobility, anxiety, fear, & hopelessness. Much of that was the pandemic, obviously, but much of that was also A2 too. After a while, LB & I ended up eating out at the same 3-4 restaurants, we did the exact same walk around the neighborhood 3-4 times a week, even my classes felt redundant, I found myself saying the same shit over & over again in response to workshopped manuscripts. I felt like I was stuck in a perpetual loop in Michigan & I wanted desperately to come back to LA, not only because this city was always the space before we tried to start a family, the space before the Covid-19 pandemic hit (because of when we left in June 2019), the place where I got my PhD before the job search, but also because this city shaped me. I became a doctor here. I became an agented writer here. I sold my first novel here. I revised my memoir here, which I sold in Michigan. I published a piece of flash nonfiction in the New York Times here. I got my half sleeve here. I got my first lectureship here. I visited my homeland from LA. I met my Japanese family while in LA. I fully developed my style here (half street style, half urban Asian preppy). LB became a supervisor here. We adopted Gogo! here. IOW, LA made me the person I am today & I kinda like that person. I relate to that person. I understand that person.

So coming back here felt like the most normal thing in the world & also the most surreal too since the time dilation I’d experienced back in the Midwest during the collapse of the world distorted my sense of how much time had passed & how slowly it was passing. Now, I’m a LA writer, I’m starting to schedule a remote tour with indie bookstores across the country, I’m working on ways to promote Counterfactual Love Stories, but I don’t fully know yet what that means. It’s something I can only understand after a couple years. Yes, I have three books coming out in the next 12 months, which I’m really grateful for (& have worked so hard for). But I don’t know yet where I’m headed, what the next step in my writing career is, whether I’ll end up writing screenplays, scoring a gig at Buzzfeed, working as an extra for Central Casting (because why the fuck not), doing freelance work as a copy editor, selling new post-rock & electronic music & tour merchandise from my Love, Amnesia, & Dream Tour, or something completely unrelated to writing & art.

TBH, I have no idea, but I have this (probably naive, definitely irrational) hope that everything is going to work out. It might be the beautiful weather that I just can’t take for granted after two winters locked in Michigan. It might be the superabundance of artists, writers, screenwriters, yoga fanatics, juice drinkers, Prius & Tesla drivers, actors, models, & influencers here. It might be the panoply of vegan restaurants, sushi joints, & cafés that serve perfect vanilla oat lattés here, but whatever it is, LA has become the place where I belong, where I thrive, where my partner can thrive, where it feels not only acceptable to not have kids or a typical nuclear family, but sometimes even necessary!

I’m happy we came back to LA. I’m happy to be here and see what my future holds for me now that I’ve centered LB for once & begun the next phase of my writing career as someone whose work is coming to a theater near you very soon.