If I dwell too much on it, it does depress me how much I feel like my life has shrunk. This was, to be sure, inevitable. Almost all of my energy is spent working so that when the day is done, I just don’t feel like doing anything at all. Because, sadly, whatever remaining energy I have gets spent on the arduous commute home. The East L.A. Interchange is evil, and whoever designed this monstrosity needs to be punished.

There’s almost no point in leaving as soon as work is done. If I leave at 6 p.m., I’ll get home at the same time as if I leave at 6:30 p.m. But since the server at work was borked, I couldn’t do my charting, and I didn’t have Internet access (IE6 doesn’t count. It’s barely more usable than a text-based browser) I decided to leave at 6 p.m. anyway.

Because I hate crawling north on the Golden State Freeway at 5 mph, I decided to take a more meandering route on the surface streets of downtown L.A. In terms of time spent, it’s probably comparable to staying on the Golden State, but it keeps me from wanting to tear my hair out and flipping off all the other drivers. It also gives me a chance to take some pictures.

But it’s odd to think I haven’t really wandered west of the 110, to say nothing of west of Fairfax for almost a year now. The Westside has become some sort of mythological place. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist, or it’s at least as distant as San Diego, or maybe even Chicago. The sense of unreality I feel with regard to parts of this vast, sprawling city reminds me of China Miéville’s The City and the City

Still, it makes me think I need to broaden my horizons. It’s been too long since I last saw the sea. I think I may need to make a trip soon.