that said, i've learned an exceptionally important lesson from all this: look before you leap. all my adult life i have done exactly the opposite. i leap. that's what i do. london. law school. sacramento. san francisco. and each time i have landed squarely on my feet. this time, i landed squarely on my face and each time i tried to stand up, bam! chin to the ground. at least these days, when i fall, i'm landing on my much-more-ample-than-before ass. that's an improvement.

maybe if i had stayed put in san francisco and waited out the recession and 9/11, i wouldn't have learned this lesson. maybe somewhere down the road, it will make all the difference. i mean, it already stopped me from packing it in and fleeing to new york. and of course, if i went back in time, i would have already learned this lesson, so there would be no worry about not learning it. okay, this is getting a little too meta. i guess what i'm saying is this: coming here when i did would only be a mistake if i refused to learn from it. and, boy oh boy, have i.