I don’t know if there is such thing as a perfect day, but for me it would have to start with a spring day in Los Angeles.

Today was one of those days. Highs in the upper 60s, so not quite shorts-and-t-shirt weather (unless you’re working in the sun). but close enough. Also cool enough at night to wear a proper coat, which is an issue with LA and the warmer parts of the year. Often it is so hot that wearing any kind of jacket, even at 2:00 in the morning, is just too much.

Beyond the fashion limitations of my adopted home town, what I like about this time of year is the newness. The expectations. I saw people in their late 20s or early 30s moving into apartments today, and I enjoying seeing their hopes and aspirations made real. It’s not a dream any more when you pack up everything you own, stuff it into a moving van, and drive for hundreds of miles. Shit just got very real. And I deeply appreciated their realness manifested in my city. It didn’t hurt that it was the perfect day for it.

I have some wonderful memories from the time when I realized I was actually going to make it in LA. I could really do this thing. Moving to LA had not been easy for me emotionally, although physically it could not have been smoother. I literally moved in with my best friend. Still, there was a while where I wasn’t sure if my LA experiment was going to work, or if I would be forced to go back to Fresno, tail between my legs. In a very real sense, making it here was a sign of independence, as if I had unlocked some kind of adult achievement. I can’t recall a specific time that this happened, it was more like a slow realization, that likely took place over many years, but still I would like to associate this feeling with Spring anyway, and so I do.

There comes a moment in a person’s life when their future begins to eclipse their past. I don’t mean that in some kind of a motivational poster sense. This isn’t me trying to make you feel better. This is a thing that happens when your negative thoughts are eventually overcome, and then subsumed, by positive ones. Perhaps the negative thoughts are drowned, except (at least in my experience) the damn things don’t always stay dead. Still, it is a weird thing to wake up one day and realize you are happy. Not for any particular reason, just that you are not longer unhappy.

And I think this is one of the things that Spring does for me. I am suddenly warm, for no reason I can ascertain. It’s just that I wake up one morning and know that shorts will be a better fit for the day instead of pants. And at no point, while I’m running around doing errands–like going to the grocery store or the library, do I feel the chill of Winter. And it is this part that is important. I am no longer cold, which to my brain translates almost directly as “I am no longer unhappy.”

Not every Spring day is perfect for this. Some are too hot, some are too cold, but every once in a while one comes along–like that girl discovered in the story about the three bears–that is just right. Today was that day for me, and I am exceedingly happy.

For a little over 10 years now I’ve been working on being an overnight sensation. So far it’s been bupkis. Nothing. Zip. I have this feeling things are starting to change. Don’t know why, I just do. Mind you, I have zero evidence for this. People are not suddenly running to buy my shit. Still…we’ll have to see.

Time will tell, as they say.

In the mean time, I have a few stories I am working on, and they are by far the best I have ever written. My novel, which I broke into a trilogy, has just completed a minor rewrite. There are a few areas that needs some finessing, and I don’t quite know how to fix them yet, but I can feel the solutions to them coming along, like ghosts whispering in my dreams. Hopefully they will arrive soon.

In any case, I remain busy. Something will eventually break.

Spring is here.