Los Angeles, CA | A Sunset in Santa Monica

Three days on the West Coast in December and my only personal plans were to see three sunsets. The first was in Venice Beach, the second was in Manhattan Beach, and the third was in Santa Monica. I’d been enjoying the peace, quiet, and crossword puzzles of my time alone there, but I was excited when I found out a friend was also randomly in Santa Monica that night. This was a friend I hadn’t seen in years, who I used to work with at a seafood restaurant in the summers when I was in college. We made arrangements to meet up later that night and I sat on the beach to catch one last sunset, which I watched while listening to Savage Garden’s Santa Monica (a seriously wonderful song) about 5 times in a row.

Los Angeles, CA | A Sunset in Manhattan Beach

I live in Manhattan. And for the most part, I love this Manhattan. But sometimes it’s hard. Like when it’s February. And rainy. And the 6 train is late every. single. day. And the wind is so wild that you think your air conditioner might fall right out of your 5th-floor-walkup living room window. And you have to keep that air conditioner in the window all year round because (1) you can’t control the raging temperature of your heaters and (2) you have no room to put the air conditioner if you take it out of the window because your apartment is the size of three office cubicles.

Los Angeles, CA | A Sunset in Venice Beach

December in New York usually stinks weather-wise, so when I had the opportunity to head to Los Angeles that month, I jumped on it. By the time my trip came around, it wasn’t that cold in New York, but I was still happy to be heading west for a few days. With all my dreams of being an actress/singer/gameshow host (without working toward these dreams AT ALL), you’d think I’d have been to LA at some point, but I’d only previously been to LAX for a few hours before flying to Hawaii.

2015 Resolution. Check.

It seems that I make resolutions on a weekly basis. Because I am ridiculously hard on myself (as even my Fluent City French teacher pointed out during my third class), I’m always picking things out that I should do better and things I should stop doing. “Always be a work in progress” has been a quote on my Facebook profile since college. But last year for my *official* 2015 resolution, I chose something that wouldn’t make me feel bad about myself and wouldn’t make me question my past mistakes. The resolution, the goal, was to explore 15 new places during the year of ’15.