Pause For Breath

I meant to write a couple of posts on leaving New York before I actually left, but between cramming in the last few gasps of city air and packing for the trip home, I wasn't able to get anything done in time. Instead, the few paragraphs I was able to write languished in a perpetually-open Chrome tab, taunting me while I questioned if I could ever find an original and meaningful way to talk about leaving that place, especially when plenty of people have done it so strikingly before (I'm looking particularly at you, Joan Didion).

Writing nostalgia, in general, has become increasingly problematic for me. As much as I've traded in its saccharine currency over the years, it's only been recently that I've started to wonder exactly what value, if any, I've been able to extract from it. While personal blogs are allowed to be self-indulgent -- and are maybe even necessarily so --, the amount of navel-gazing I've done in the way that I've done it has begun to seem directionless and uninspired. I could've been doing better.

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The other form of navel-gazing I've enjoyed trimming my blog(s) with over the years has been the picture/recap post. Seeing as how that old standard hasn't been causing me any existential grief, you can expect a good amount of it in the coming days (or more likely weeks, given my updating habits) as I recount, in the thrilling monotone of text, the resplendent journey that was my cross-country drive from New York to Los Angeles. And maybe when that's all done with, I'll be able to finally figure out what I've been trying so hard to say about New York.

Pictures starting next time.