Leaving you here

Early morning, bittersweet.  After a little over a year, today is my last day in Santa Barbara.  At least this time.  I'm sitting here, having my coffee and thinking back, all that has happened since I've been here, the one step forward, two steps back, turning things over in my mind and trying to make what turned into a rather painful ending into an exciting and welcoming beginning. Sometimes that can take a lot of twisting and turning.

So, I'm pretty much packed.  Of course there are lots of loose ends to take care of today.  Like, go by Peet's Coffee and buy some of my favorite Chai Tea.  I know Portland has great tea and tea houses, the Tao of Tea being one of my favorites, but I just need to have one tin of Peet's with me.  Sorting and deciding which things will stay in the long term storage unit, which to take with me in the limited space I will have and adding to the Goodwill bag, moving is never fun.  You would think by now I wouldn't have much left to sort out, but like all good humans, I continue to accumulate.

It's raining here today in Santa Barbara.  That's actually a good sign.  I remember when I lived in Hawaii right after I graduated from high school.  The day I was leaving Honolulu to come back to California, it poured rain.  The locals told me that when it rains on the day you are leaving, the island is crying for you, sad to see you go.   I think the same story applies here.  I'm gonna miss you too, Santa Barbara.  You've given me a lot.  More fun in the 80's than I've ever had in my life, the birthplace of my beautiful daughter, breathtaking scenery that always stay with me, and like San Francisco, I will leave you part of my heart.

Let it Bleed

I'm back.  After taking several months to write my first "real" book, it is now finally sitting in the hand's of the editor with a planned March 1st release date.  It was hard letting it go.  It was like the first day of school, when your little five year old marches off to her kindergarten class and you drive all the way home in tears.  How did the time go so fast, when did she get so grown up? The book felt like it would never be done, and it kinda snuck up on me, when it announced it was going off to get it's own apartment.

Ernest Hemingway said,"There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."  In my case, a keyboard.  And he was right, although we were definitely not writing like Hemingway, still, at times it was a bloody mess.

It's been an interesting year, intense, frustrating and exciting.  I've never worked so hard, spent so many hours and sleepless nights consumed with something.  When I compare writing a book to having a child, I am not exaggerating.  I gave my soul to this writing project and my heart to my writing partner, and at the end of it, little was left of me except for my mind.  To ponder all that had happened, all that I had gained and all that I had lost. Writing isn't simply putting words down on paper, it is sharing words that are little pieces of ourselves, little droplets of our emotions, wet and raw with feeling.

The book is done but I'm told it is like a pregnancy.  The easy part.  Now I have to raise the thing! But, with that said, my blog is going to continue, from a different place and a different mind set.  I am moving on, leaving Santa Barbara, where I've been for a little over a year now, and settling up in the great Pacific Northwest, Portland, Oregon.

My Coffee Shop Diary, was originally started to document the first year of my once planned move to that same city, where I was to open a coffee shop.  Well, if you've been a reader of this blog from the beginning, you know that never happened.  Now the blog is coming full circle, it will now continue from where it was once intended to start, and start all over again.  This time it will be documenting my move to a new city and all of the surprises, excitement and challenges that are there waiting for me.

There isn't any plan to purchase my own coffee house in the near future, but there are many in Portland, and I am sure I will find one that makes me feel at home, where I can grab a latte,  plug in, and let it bleed.