Transitions

Your first was college, like most everyone else's. A new place, a new face. New people, who knew nothing about you. You could be anything. You could be nothing.

What you were, was weird, bizarre, incongruous, strange. You said odd things. You did odd things. You were a freak. What you were, was you.

You met one of your best friends that first day in college. You made other friends that you'll know for the rest of your life. You did good. And you moved on.

Not just on: you moved across the planet. You went to Australia. Midway through college, trying to figure out what the hell you were doing with your life, trying to figure out just what you were going to be, you decided to take a trip to the lost continent to see if you could find just what it was that was lost.

You found it. You found spontaneity. You found random acts of chance. You found the life that could be lived if you went down the up escalator, and went swimming in the ocean at midnight after a storm, and danced like a madman while everyone else stood around and stared, and ran across the Sydney Harbor bridge with your friend on your back and the world at your feet. You found life the way it could be, and should be, if only you would just fucking relax and enjoy yourself.

And you met another one of your best friends, a guy you'd eventually stand next to at his wedding, the first day you walked into your new house in a suburb of Sydney and threw your duffel bag on your bed. And you made other friends who would stay in your heart, and stay there still, and who will be forever welcome at any place you choose to call your home. Did good there, too. And you moved on.

You finished college and moved to New York. The Big City. For a guy who thought crowded frat parties in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania were the worst of the worst, moving to a city of eight square miles and ten million people on a good day was asking for trouble. You knew you would hate it. You had to do it, to work in movies; you had to sleep on a couch or a futon or an air mattress or whatever the hell you could find, and wake up at four AM to make the call time on the film you were working on (for free, no less), and you knew you would absolutely HATE it.

And, of course, you loved it. And, of course, you met one of your best friends, a guy who you knew would, and who will, stick with you, like all your good friends, for the rest of your life.

And in those first months in this new city that you absolutely knew you should hate, if only you weren't having such a good time, you met a girl who became your boss, and your friend, and the love of your life, and your wife, in that order.

Needless to say, buddy, you did pretty damn great on that one.

You're moving again soon. You're going across the country to try to make your dreams come true. You don't know what to expect. You don't know anyone there. You don't have a job. You don't even have a place to LIVE yet. You could hate it. It could be a total disaster. You don't know. You're going anyway.

But I have to tell you, my friend: I think you're going to be okay.