Three.

Remember that one time when I had a blog? Yeah, me either. But the other day my mom asked me about it and I felt a panic, like I had left my baby in the backseat of the car rushing in to yoga or something. My poor, forgotten blog. Clearly I don’t have children. How about like finding a favorite pair of jeans. Like the jeans you wear everyday of your life. Until maybe one day you decide to wear shorts or a dress or whatever. And then your poor jeans are out of sight out of mind, at the very bottom of the massive pile of everything else you tried on before you left the house. Maybe they’re lost until who knows how long it takes you do laundry and you find them again. But once you do, you put them on, and all is right with the world. Yeah, it feels a lot like that. This blog is a lot like my favorite jeans. Now that I’ve most likely offended all parents of the world, and definitely compared this blog to an old pair of jeans– what I’m trying to say is, I miss you. And it’s nice to be back.

You guys. The other day, I celebrated my third anniversary of moving to Los Angeles. July thirteenth, to be exact. Which happened to fall on a Friday. Even better. Fitting that Friday the Thirteenth would mark three years of my living in Los Angeles. Black cats and superstition aside, I can easily say that the last three years have been some of the best ever. Three whole years. I graduated college on June thirteenth and moved down here exactly one month later. I’ve wanted to live in Los Angeles my whole life. To be honest, when I thought about my future, I kinda thought I’d have a star on the Walk of Fame by now. You see, when I was younger, I was destined for stardom. Like, you guys, I’d have my mom put my hair in sponge curls and I’d pretend I was starring as Little Orphan Annie and perform You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile in my hallway. When I was eight, I made my uncle take headshots for me. For reals. I put on a blue sleeveless polo, to make my eyes pop obviously. Tied my hair in pigtails, to look all American duh. And climbed a tree, because that’s what kids do, right. So I listed my interests – gymnastics, the Backstreet Boys, whatever – compiled my model card and had my mom send it out to a bazillion casting agencies in Los Angeles in hopes of being discovered. Much to my surprise, no one got back to me. A lot of little girls submitted their photos this summer, Samantha. Just be patient, they’ll get back to you, my mom said. Yeah, right. When I was twelve, I chopped off all of my hair to play Christopher Robin in the Napa Valley College’s critically acclaimed performance of Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Talk about dedication to your craft. I even visited elementary schools and signed autographs. As if I needed a bigger ego. For Halloween when I was thirteen, I dressed up as my idol Marilyn Monroe. Obviously I wasn’t really aware of her biography or how it ended. But any excuse to convince my mom I needed to bleach my hair orange blonde, I took advantage of. 

So flash forward a decade or so, and here I am. And I can honestly say that while I’m not doing exactly what I thought I’d be doing down here, I couldn’t really imagine doing anything else. So while you’re probably vomiting over how cheesy that was, I’m gunna go be super Los Angeles and hike Runyon Canyon, or hang with underage Disney Chanel stars at some new club, or I don’t know, drink a mocha iced blended at the Coffee Bean on Santa Monica Blvd. But don’t worry. While my mom is searcing through boxes of old photos for my homemade model casting card, I’ll leave you with this… and I had braces to boot. Sometimes, I can’t even.