I’m out of coffee this morning, so I decided to walk into what I refer to as “the Village”: the strip of restaurants, convenience/liquor stores, bars and coffeeshops at the foot of Washington Boulevard, at Venice Beach. I call it that out of habit, in reference to the high street shopping district of my own home municipality. Oak Bay Village was also the closest source of Starbucks.
And the thing I love about living here is that I can walk out the door, around back, and directly into the Venice canal paths. That takes me through a charmingly beautiful landscape, canals and white arched bridges and overflowing gardens, within thirty seconds of leaving my porch. And as I walked along, zoned out to some particularly pretty synthpop, I was just in a state of absolute joy. And I half-danced along the paths to Starbucks out of sheer happiness.
sammynella said to me on Saturday (and I love her for it), that I remind her of a quote, that I see life as a buffet while others are starving themselves. Which I was thinking about this morning. Because mornings put me into a state of golden retriever happiness. Like my dog back home, “come on, let’s go! there’s places to go and trees to sniff and people to say hello to!”. And that’s exactly how I feel today. Only it’s more like, “come on, let’s go! there’s sunshine to bike through and people to smile at and work to be done! there’s a zillion things to be learned today!”
By the way, have I ever written about how happy I am when I’m learning? I didn’t really realize that until I came to L.A., and started teaching myself an entire history course. I went back to French class and grinned the first week, because I was so happy to be back in a classroom. I’m saving up the time and money to take some writing classes this fall. I like learning. I have lots of it to be done, every single day, and that makes me very happy.
Today, I’m sitting at my desk, with sunshine flooding in the windows, and my on-loan cat asleep in a patch of it. I’m about to go into a job I really like, that I’m finally getting the hang of. I live in one of the most exciting cities in the world, with a million things to be done and learned in it. What isn’tthere to be happy about?
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