6.29.08.Last Friday was similar to many Fridays before- an unsettling combination of joy and sorrow. Tearing down wallpaper and stacking personal items in boxes, stretching masking tape, shaking hands and saying goodbye to people I just met and don’t want to say farewell to. Goodbyes usually leave me with the dreaded what-if questions, I hate what-if questions. You try to live your life right and avoid the what-if questions. One day you wake up and find yourself looking down the barrel of thirty and ask yourself another question- what’s it all for?

Then on a Sunday afternoon waiting in the Trader Joe’s checkout line it hits you square on the chin. You see a snotty nosed kid with boogers running down his face and sobbing in his father’s arms. The man wipes his son’s nose and tells the boy to stop crying and be a man. That’s the goal ain’t it? A child, a family, property. When you get to be 30, it’s time to stop running around; it’s time to plant your flag in the ground and say this is mine. This is my land, this is my family and I’m going to spend the next 30 years here, cultivating my land and if need be die on this land. Will that be los angeles? Never, not as long as lunatics are in charge. I wouldn’t trust the mayor to lead me across the street. So you follow the path of the patriot, join his flock and rest assured that you go to work for the right reasons and never have to answer another what-if question.