tuesday, may 20th, 2026
4:04 pm
i went to california for a week and it was great and all, but there was a certain loneliness about it that i started to feel after a few days. i hadn't noticed until i was sitting down on a bench at evening when i stayed in the mountains. everything else felt like it was under me, and the lights of the city were twinkling like stars miles away. there was a tennis club in front of me but at the base of the mountain, and you'd hear the echo of rackets hitting the tennis ball every few seconds, almost like a metronome. it was how i knew time was passing, because everything else made me feel like i was trapped in a second of time, stuck to the bench and forever forced to stare out at the rest of world while i remained alone.
i'm not used to the desert. the heat waves rising off the asphalt in its symmetrical lines, the yellow ground below, trees used sparingly in nice neighborhoods to try and prove that they too can look normal. but everything felt far from normal. i was in boats all day, drinking bottles of expensive wine that i never learned how much they really were, and lounging around like i had never worked a day in my life. that's what everyone appeared like. i had heard the words, "no one here works", and finally believed it. there's coastal towns within coastal towns. everyone's in their own bubble because why would you try to leave it if you have everything?
toward the end of the trip, i was becoming less optimistic. i was getting out of bed later and later. the guilt of missing out kept me motionless, apathetic. in some small way, i felt like i was losing myself just by being in the west. i wasn't living my own life, but a mirage of someone else's, whose beliefs and values are vastly different than my own. was it really me who lounged in a duffy boat parked at a mayor's house in newport? was it really me who drank wine and took in the californian sun at wineries full of people with trust funds and generational wealth? i hold the trip really close to my heart because of what i got to experience, but was it really me?
maybe i'm not used to doing so much travel. it might have clouded my vision in some sort of resentment that i didn't think i'd have. but even more less likely is that it was 100% me who experienced everything with a full heart. i'd go again in a heartbeat, though.