My Last Day in LA
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I’ve spent most of my life pursuing distractions from being by myself. This past year has been…interesting.
LA is a loud place. A place with constant movement. I didn’t feel the “slowness” that people speak of when they mention the West Coast.
I spent a year trying to clear my head and explore my own true desires. I spent time making music, writing, and coding.
For the first time in many years, I spent 80% of my time alone. The most social contact that I had was walking to the corner store to buy an energy drink, or perhaps going to the gym to workout.
This time was not without the typical waste of seeking out projects and ideas that were not integrated into my true desires. The constant desire to “start something” rather than start the right thing popped up many times. The opportunism of being entrepreneurial can lead to grasping at straws in a haystack of ideas. For example, I probably purchased 20 domains.
I ran experiments on digital speed networking events, depression support groups, software consulting for remote teams, podcast production, podcast review groups, publishing on medium, music producer communities, digital trade show platforms, and Facebook marketplace management.
I went to a music production school and made some songs. I thought about restarting old ideas that I’ve started in the past. I thought about waking people up in the morning again. I thought about working at a new startup instead of starting my own. I went to the largest music trade show and pitched myself to industry leaders. I nearly started to work as a music producer manager. I applied to 3 different coding schools.
This year has been a time of major exploration. Right in the middle of all of this my dad passed away and zapped me into a different mindset completely. I found myself spending a ton of time reflecting on my past and reliving the trauma. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being back in high school. I have been all over the map in terms of mental health. I have had a more consistent commitment to health than I ever have, and at the same time, I have had creeping depression as a constant backdrop.
I found life in LA to be full of interesting diversity and opportunity, but also of physical distance and disparate communities. I doubt that my experience could encapsulate all of LA or come to some definitive statement of “what LA is like.” Sure rent costs more. Sure there are famous people here. Sure there’s culture and entertainment like crazy.
Just like in any place, your experience is highly subjective and dependent on your personal efforts and circumstances. My sense was really dominated by major juxtapositions. You have extreme poverty, like people eating out of trash cans, right next to the shop that sells $10,000 dresses. You have extreme talent and success alongside lame tourist attractions and opportunities for voyeurism. Some people seemed to always be just scraping by or trying to be accepted by LA. Others were at the pinnacle. They had stuff figured out. I don’t know if that’s unique to LA, but it’s definitely a bright demarcation.
In my own case, I felt that I truly could thrive here, but I chose to leave it for other experiences that seemed more aligned with my personal destiny. I had jobs that I turned down. I had projects that I walked away from. There was just something off. Something was missing. The bigger purpose. The bigger idea was missing. I couldn’t answer the questions, “Why here? What should I be working on?”
I feel incredibly lucky to have had this experience. My brother reminded me that not many people who come from our circumstances get to move across the country and live in a place like LA. That’s true. I couldn’t have imagined this as a high schooler working at Target just trying to make it out of poverty.
Some crazy events happened while I was here. My first month here brought a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, and I realized I had no idea what to do. During the shaking, my neighbor totally nonchalantly said, “Welcome to SoCal.” Then there were major fires that broke out. I remember waking up in the morning and thinking, “Who is barbecuing this early?”
Additionally, I was here to experience the city-wide mourning of Kobe Bryant passing away. I saw the murals, the memorials, and the chaos on Melrose as people took over the street chanting “Kobe! Kobe!” It was surreal.
Then we had the COVID outbreak. At first, it was a joke. Then it got really, really serious. People started hoarding food. Before social distancing started, I sat in Whole Foods and watched as people swarmed shelves. I thought to myself. I’ll be fine. I’ll admit I was in total denial of what was happening. Then I got sick.
I had a very scary experience of having trouble breathing, having a high fever, and having no way to get treated. I called my doctor. My doctor told me to call the CDC. The CDC told me to call the hospital. The hospital told me to call my doctor. I called the hospital again. The hospital told me that “While you have the symptoms, you do not meet our criteria for testing. In order to test you, you have to prove that you were exposed to someone who was already diagnosed positive.” How ludicrous is that?
We later found out that my neighborhood had the highest incidence of confirmed cases in LA. To be honest, I don’t know if that’s because there was more illness here or if there were just more rich people who were paying for testing.
As I hung up the phone after talking to the hospital, I just laughed. Laid in my bed and felt like my brain was melting. I genuinely thought, “If I die, fuck it.” As I got better, the city seemed to get worse. I stayed in my house for two-and-a-half weeks. When I had a week of no symptoms, I had to go outside. I was going nuts. At this point, there was not a soul outside. It was eerily quiet. Now, over a month later, while more people are outside and moving around, most businesses remain closed. Many people remain out of work.
This is the state of affairs as I am leaving this city. It makes me sad to see it this way and to leave in this state. I am somewhat attached. My neighbors are all very sweet. I had an incredible gym community. I made some close friends here and I’m sad that I will not be here personally to watch them grow, thrive, and rebound from this. On the flip side, I am happy to return home and work on something new. I’m tripping into my thirties and hoping to hit the ground running.
