California Dreaming

It's the beginning of June and I'm heading into a summer of fun and excitement that has started early.

I'm in sunny California for story meetings on a movie I'm writing. I'm talking with producers and drinking Starbucks coffee (which I have stopped apologizing for) along the Univeral Studios City Walk during the day, and having dinner in Malibu and spending my nights staring at the lights of LA through 14th story hotel windows.

Next week I will spend in Michigan with Robin working on the movie during the days, and filling my free hours with enough time with him to hold me through a month in Rome before he arrives. A month is a long time, and I will miss him. Rome, however, holds part of my heart as well, and I will find it again as I enter the marble-floored Pantheon or walk into St. Peter's square, or eat gelato on a street corner as the sun sets.

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So it hit me as the sun set behind hazy white mist over the Pacific ocean last night.

I was in a restaurant on the water with my friend Michael watching pelicans dive head-first for their dinner into choppy waves that pounded the rocks at the base of the restaurant... and there it was. The truth of this summer: Everything is different now.

It's a fitting start for what I've taken to calling my new life. Here on the west coast of the United States where the land ends and the sun sets... and whitecaps crash relentlessly against rocks as the sun slips below the horizon... I tell stories of my past, and I look to the future with excitement and fear, hope and joy, and I wonder... "what's next?"

And the answer, as always, is 'everything.'