Well.

On the one hand, I had a good time on this trip. Today I went into the garden again off and on, and I went to the Natural History Museum, and I detoured a few times through USC to check out the campus and their very nice campus bookstore. I am amazed at how oddly safe this trip to LA has been--haven't run into super creepy dudes following me around on the street and no guns (though there's more cops around than I see normally at home) and I have felt totally okay wandering around alone here. It's been very nice, with my kind of weather going on to boot. I don't feel the "I'm at home!" sort of feelings, but I never feel like that anywhere, so what's the diff? But this place has been nice.

On the one hand, the garden was pretty quiet early and late in the day. On the other hand...the mid-morning and early afternoon are apparently Kid Field Trip Time by the gazillions. I don't think I've ever seen so many damn kids on field trips at once in my life. Swarming everywhere and I wasn't even in any museum. Because they all had to have lunch, you see. I did bail for awhile in the middle (following Monica's advice) when my camera batteries died and I needed to hike 3 blocks to the CVS to get more, and picked up lunch to go while I was there. That didn't really change anything.

I had chosen what day to go to each museum on based on what their websites said--CSC said they were less busy on weekends and NHM said they were busy on weekends and weekdays until 1:30--both because of endless school field trips. I did plan on waiting until after 1:30 to go to NHM. However, there were so many kids swarming about that I eventually got fed up and went into the museum a bit early. One guy who worked there said "they usually clear out around two," but it was more like three. Once the kids left it was dead quiet, but until they left, I eventually found myself hiding in the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back of the bird section.

I kind of wanted to go to this museum because I hadn't been able to go through all of the NHM in DC. But upon going through all of it...well, there's a fair chunk of "not ready yet" exhibits and I hate that, but....I dunno. I'm starting to wonder why so much of "natural history" involves long dark hallways of nothing but stuffed dead animals. And rocks. They do a good job on the dinosaur hall and the bird area is pretty damn comprehensive (if also frequently so weirdly dark you can barely see anything), but the California history section is (a) located in the basement, which tells you how much they care about it, and (b) it's halfway walled off for...some reason. Oddly, you can peek through the windows in the fake walls and see what they walled off.

I...am starting to think that maybe I am not so much into natural history, somehow. They also had a temporary butterfly garden up, which oddly cost more on a separate ticket than the museum admission, and it was freaking small. I didn't feel like it was worth that much money, especially since it was see-through and I could kinda tell what was going on in there. I went in their souvenir shop for it and was way disappointed when I found the perfect tie-dyed butterfly shirt...and it only came in small kids' sizes despite the adult shirt on display. Grrr. So anyway, that museum was not my favorite. Oh well.

I did spend a bit of time wandering through the USC campus, since it was there and all. It's very nice. Their bookstore is 2 floors worth of stuff and I didn't even see where people buy textbooks (not there, clearly). I gathered that it must be finals week, what with the obvious setup for graduation going on in the middle of campus and all the graduates posing in grad wear in either the rose garden or by Tommy Trojan. I was surprised at how bike-y it was as well.

On the other hand... well, this quote isn't exactly how I feel and it's on a different subject, but I still kinda relate:

"I know what you�re going to say, and I thank you in advance. That it�s amazing I got this far. That it�s unheard of for a thumb-sucking novice like me to get a beginner script produced as a network pilot. I hear you. I hear the high risk, high reward. I hear the better luck next time. (Also, it�s not completely and totally over; there�s talk of cable.)
And someday soon, I will return your calls and we�ll have that long-overdue lunch, over which I will regale you with the gory details.
But for now I am crawling into the darkest corner of my house and just rocking."

There's also a quote from Castle tonight, which is perhaps not exactly said right so assume it's a paraphrase: There's a point in our lives where we need to stop fooling ourselves that things are going to be the way we want them to be.

In my case, I went down there to see if a psychic prediction I had 3 years ago about this garden, on this date, would happen. I had a vision while meditating of me going around a corner into a rose garden with really flat paths and running into a photographer, dressed all in black. I hadn't even heard of that garden before the vision (thanks, Google Images, for confirming what I saw), which gave it some credence to me even though I am normally not a vision-y person. And when I got there yesterday, I even managed to find the exact corner where I ah...met someone in the vision. So I wasn't totally fucking off and imagining that shit. Except apparently I did make it up.

It did not happen, of course, because reality always wins and reality sucks. I saw plenty of teenagers, and old men, and schmoopy couples. I did not see the person that I saw in the vision anywhere at all.

I can only come to the conclusion that I deluded myself.

I was hoping that I got this vision to go to LA for a reason. Presumably to move there, to find some reason to go. To meet someone--who I got involved with or got a career start with or something. I never knew what, but I wanted to find out. It was kind of my last-ditch attempt to shake myself up and find something, since living life in my town hasn't helped that one bit. And when I go back home tomorrow and go back to my boring life and daily annoying dramas with no hope of that changing, it'll feel like I never left at all. It was a nice vacation and that is all it will be.

It's great for me that I got out on my own and had a good safe time alone and acted like a real adult by booking a hotel room and stuff like that, but was this trip the key to finding something or someone new? Sadly no, it was not. I deluded myself into that one.

And despite the lecture from my mom tonight about how I should look on the bright side--and probably the one from my shrink tomorrow-- I am going to feel like crap about that. And beat myself up, because I love it. It's what I do.

I feel great about the trip except for this one foolish thing that I dreamed up, thinking it was going to inspire or save my ass. Hah. No. Life doesn't work like that. You can have minor miracles, but not major ones, apparently. Also, visions are bullcrap if I have them :P

(Though I can say that Mom has NOT gone to the "OMG ABANDONED" place so far about this, even when it turned out that I had no real reason to go after all. She has been very proud of me and said I don't have to feel like I have to babysit her all the time, and that the reason she bitched at me all the time when I had boyfriends was because she thought I was neglecting my dad, and now that he's dead, uh....who cares, I guess? Go figure. I even pointed out that while she doesn't act like I'm abandoning her every weekend, she does do it for some of them. Startled her.)

I just need to realize that ain't nobody gonna save me but me. There's no reason to move to LA, and if I can't come up with something else to do with my life--and so far the answer to that is a whopping no--then I need to accept that this is all I got and all I have and all I will ever be. I need to stick with my job even if I don't like a good chunk of my new one because there's nothing else, and I'll be there when the rest of my group retires in a few years and be the senior staff person with all the expertise. Basically, that will be it for me.

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