{"id":3632,"date":"2013-09-22T03:22:22","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T08:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/?p=3632"},"modified":"2013-09-22T03:22:22","modified_gmt":"2013-09-22T08:22:22","slug":"i-love-la-here-i-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/i-love-la-here-i-am\/","title":{"rendered":"I Love LA &#038; Here I Am"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, I was teaching a course on psychological assessment in a program on Addiction Counseling. The counseling professors had a term for people who moved to another city or state in an attempt to solve their substance abuse problems, &#8220;going geographic&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>The problem with that strategy, they said, is that wherever you go, there you are. You take your problems with you.<\/p>\n<p>I was thinking of that this morning as I drove through downtown LA on my way to a board meeting. I&#8217;ve lived a lot of places in my life &#8211; four countries, six states, eleven cities. Yet, every time I fly into LAX and see our giant glow sticks , or drive through the city and see the downtown skyline, I think how much I love LA.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130922-004700.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130922-004700.jpg\" alt=\"20130922-004700.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yes, traffic is a mess, the cost of living is through the roof and we have our share of problems, but there is  no place like LA.<\/p>\n<p>I love it here so much because this is the place where I finally got my shit together. When I was young, well, things were not so good. I lived in Halifax for a while, with relatives, and I was still the original pain in the ass, but things got better. I lived in Tokyo for a year, made it through my junior year of college, and got my act together somewhat more. I lived in San Diego for a while, got a start as an engineer, divorced my first husband, had a baby (not in that order), won a world championships. <\/p>\n<p>Skipping ahead &#8230; for the past 17 years, I&#8217;ve lived in the same house, raised four children, made wonderful friends, established two companies, been married to the same husband. Over the years, I&#8217;ve become more mature, things that used to bother me no longer do. To a much larger extent than when I was younger, I have figured life out.<\/p>\n<p>Which is why, I realized this morning, I love LA so much. Because, wherever you go, there you are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, I was teaching a course on psychological assessment in a program on Addiction Counseling. The counseling professors had a term for people who moved to another city or state in an attempt to solve their substance abuse problems, &#8220;going geographic&#8221;. The problem with that strategy, they said, is that wherever you go, there&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-de-mars-general-life-ramblings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3633,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3632\/revisions\/3633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}