getting used to change is my problem.

New Orleans was a sandstorm—coarse, exciting, and fleeting. It was a
relief when it was finally over, but now sometimes all I want is to
return. I'm afraid if I don't, the three months I spent there in
overfed discomfort will quickly evaporate from my memory, and the
experience will become like some patched together story telephoned
from a friend of a friend.

In reality—the present—the experience of New Orleans actually is
someone else's. It belongs to friends. While my own little realm of
existence somehow still involves gypsy jazz bands, it is devoid of
morning meetings (which I am shockingly nostalgic about), beignets,
oddball nicknames (or one ball nicknames), mushroom trailers, colored
bricks, and a million other idiosyncrasies that I'd apparently grown
to appreciate. Oddly, even though I was crammed into what was probably
originally a three bedroom house with a rotating cast of 16 or 17
other people, sleeping in an unenclosed room on modified bunk bed, and constantly switching
jobs, I kind of felt at home.

That said, if there's one thing I've learned in the past 26-plus years
of consciousness it's this: life is transience.