It’s 4:00 am and I am sitting in a hotel room somewhere in the heart of Hollywood, California. It’s a small room with an even smaller bathroom next to it. One with no more than a stand-up sink and shower with the barest of essentials.

There is no food in this hotel room to speak of and the only drinking water is what comes from the bathroom spigot. An option even the most renegade of Hollywood notables would want to reconsider. It’s a private and cramped space to spend the next few days but one that will do very nicely.

After all, it is only me.

For the better part of the last hour I’ve been seated at a round table next to the door listening to the sounds of an empty, portable refrigerator hum its docile tones while outside, the beeping from a garbage truck with its transmission in reverse welcomes in a new LA morning.

I’ve spent most of the last twenty-four hours either in the air, on a bus in highly congested LA traffic (what they say about it is true) or walking many miles as a junkie East Coast tourist just taking it all in. In between checking emails, sending texts, running to baggage carousels and Flyaway buses as well as finding time to eat, the day was a complete whirlwind.

During this trip I will finally meet a few of the people I’ve been conversing with online for the past several years. Amazing people I’ve interviewed and written about several times during that span, but ones who’s own existence is known to me only through emails and telephone conversation. It’s going to be exciting and surreal at the same time.

Of course, somewhere along the way I’m also going to find time to write, which is another one of the main reasons I’m here. This trip is a nice retreat to catch up on some articles I’ve been meaning to get to while at the same time getting into the real meat of a few new stories! I am looking forward to sitting in a Hollywood coffee shop and letting others hear the sound of my laptop keys clicking away while I busily write down my thoughts and emotions.

And right now there are certainly a lot of them!