Place: California
Steven spent a semester in California in fall 2018 as part of his Epitech exchange program. He returned for another US stay in October 2019, but the record is most focused on the fall 2018 semester.
What it represented
He described California as the destination he had wanted for years. It stood for escape from the social narrowness of his earlier life and for the idea that distance would force change.
The first journal entry from the period opens with a claim of renewal. He says he had moved to California, that life was changing, and that he could start over.
What actually happened
California did not change him by itself. By the end of 2018, the journal records a breakdown and the emergence of the idea later captured in No One Is Coming. The central lesson is that location change did not resolve the underlying problem.
The period is still important because it removed familiar structure. In California, he could no longer rely on the surrounding environment to explain or contain his behavior. That made the gap between intention and action harder to ignore.
Adderall
The July 2019 entries mention two productive days on Adderall. This is the first documented stimulant use in the record and the first time he describes an immediate attraction to stimulants as a way of restoring motivation.
The teacher
Ms. Rahmati assigned free-writing homework, and Steven turned that assignment into the beginning of his journal practice. The entries are formal in address but quickly exceed the frame of the exercise.