It’s really tough to know what to feel or whether to feel anything when you don’t know what you are doing.

It looks like Cali, westward ho, is likely back on. The downsides are money (fucking hell, I hate thinking about money) and time. It will take me a good millenium or two to clean up my humble belongings, pare down to cross-country style and decide what, in fact, to take.

Worry, worry, worry.

The plus sides are that I have choices at all and that apparently M. still likes hanging out with me.

I gotta admit the fantasy of reinvention and stomping on the grounds of folks like Janis is mighty appealing. East Coast, I did actually mind quite a few Ps and Qs, maintained steady jobs, paid for insurance, overpaid monthly mortgage payments, the very model of a modern, single, independent “gal.” But, West Coast, I could take my natural born writing talents (such as they are) and maybe be/do something else or my computer geekiness or whatever the fucking quirks of talent, intelligience and fate that so very got under the skin of the small-minded fucks back here. (You know who you are, and for fuck’s sake, stop monitoring my website.)

Of course, the money thing is not so much rational as deeply rooted. My mother’s voice saying something like, “Love flies out the window, when bills come in the door.” Still and all, I have some dough socked away because of her, because of myself and expressly to give the proverbial bird to the staid and static life into which, I believe, she felt forced. (Truth is, even with options wide open, I’m not sure she had the intestinal fortitude for great adventure or leaving places to which she was accustomed. But, the fantasy was always there in her litany of regrets and disappointments.)

I don’t think she would mind at all if I spent every dime of my inheritance on trying for a different kind of life or on writing in general. Of course, she would be bullshit, if it were strictly to follow a man.

What can I say, even though she’s gone, I’m still Pat’s daughter.