Photo by Teo Duldulao on Unsplash

I love LA this time of year. I really do. It’s still cold (and GOD has it been raining this year) but the warm, sunny days are coming more frequently and isn’t so hot yet that you don’t appreciate them. There is something blooming about now that might be my favorite smell in the world. I’m not a flower person, I have no idea what it is. From the smell, I would guess it’s called something like “honeysuckle”.

Is there a flower person in LA reading this blog? What flower is that? It blooms like crazy every spring and makes everything smell delicious and amazing and edible.

It reminds me of when I first moved here. My first official spot in LA (after some couch crashing- sorry I filled your living room with balloons while I trained for my weird party clown job, David) was in the Hollywood Hills. The flowers that blossomed up there smelled like what heaven must smell like. Not the Christian heaven, which I always imagine smells like Pine-sol. Like…maybe a Buddhist heaven. Or whatever atheist liberal heaven is.

That can’t be the best way to explain that….but there it is.

Anyway, whenever I get a big breeze carrying that gorgeous LA spring smell, I’m totally transported back to the excitement of first moving here. I remember when getting hired as a party clown was a positive thing, back before numerous side jobs beat all the spirit out of me and I learned to hate all people. When LA was a city of dreams and famous people and possibilities. When I only had to find $500 a month for rent….in the Hollywood Hills….three houses away from Lindsay Lohan.

Ahhhh the good old days.

A few things have stayed the same. I still love the smell. I still feel LA is a city of dreams and famous people and possibilities. I will never again clown, and I literally can’t stretch my imagination to the realm of $500 rent. (Guys….can we imagine this? Did I move to LA in 1956?)

But, god, I’m still excited.

I’m not in the habit of dishing out unsolicited advice (hahaha yes I am, I’m the oldest of 6, I give out advice like it’s my job, y’all- it’s very annoying), but I’m going to give you some (more than I already do) right now, dear reader.

Live a life that gets you excited as hell. Whatever you have to do, do it. ESPECIALLY those of us that deal with depression and anxiety and every other type of mental crap. Because when SO many days are hard for no reason, shouldn’t the rest of those days be outstanding? Joyful? Shouldn’t they happen in a place or with a job or in a relationship where you can’t WAIT to get out of bed and be a part of it??

Find the thing. Find your thing. You deserve it! We all fucking deserve to have as much happiness as we can find in this brief time on the planet.

Whatever your place is, whatever your situation is, find somewhere where the flowers are always blooming for you, where the very smell in the air makes you skip down the street. God, you owe it to yourself. I don’t care if it’s a corner of your basement or a whole city. A nine to five or a dance class. A whole life upheaval or organizing that awful closet once and for all. Find it. Claim it. Proudly.

My head and my nose and my heart are so full of happy. There’s so much work to be done in the world, I know, but we may as well do it from our happy places! I, for one, will be stopping to smell the (What is it? Gerber something? Hydrangea? Is that a gardenia? Guys, help!) a lot this season.