So I've never done the whole MySpace blog thing. But I thought I'd give it a try. Those of you who know anything about The Josh Report know that I'm kind of a sporadic blogger. I blog mostly when my life is in the crapper. So the fact that I haven't really blogged a lot lately is a good sign.

So here it is, ladies and gentlemen: I'm SERIOUSLY considering moving back to Chicago at the end of the summer. It's a fact so heinously disturbing to myself that I can only admit it in cyberspace (or via text message). Of course it's a decision that can't be made without copious amounts of prayer, but just the fact that I've been entertaining the thought for more than five minutes is enough to concern me. And I should be concerned. Because it would be ludicrous to move back to Chicago. Granted, I would have an opportunity to live rent-free for several months and save money for grad school (for which the application process alone will prove financially stressful), but I would also be under my mother's roof. Nothing personal against my mother, but who wants to relinquish so much freedom just to keep from paying bills? L.A. surely is not my lady (as a matter of fact, three years ago I wrote a blog entry called "L.A. Ain't My Lady") but it is the place where I forged some semblance of an identity. Where I met the majority of the people who are currently my best friends. Where I went to college. Where I became a writer. Where I took that drunken picture of me riding a mechanical bull. How could I possibly leave all that? How on earth could I give that up?

I hate that the city where I became an adult is also the city with the most impossibly high cost of living in America. Sure, in New York, the rents are a little higher, but New Yorkers don't have to worry about driving and all its attendant costs (insurance, GAS, maintenance, GAS, registration, GAS, finance payments, GAS). Sometimes I think that I have no business whatsoever living alone. But there are so many great things about living alone that I couldn't possibly trade away now. Now that I've had a taste of what it's like to live as a full-grown Urbanite Adult, I'm more than ready to go back to grad school. And I suppose that's the silver lining to this cloud: if I had a full-time I absolutely loved, I wouldn't feel the motivation to go back to school. But I don't. So I do.