NJ to LA at 25
Moving out to Los Angeles was one of the biggest transitions I’ve made in life. If you don’t know a lot about me, I was born in Philadelphia, and grew up in New Jersey my whole life. I went to college in Pennsylvania, but I hadn’t had many opportunities to travel. The summer before I moved to Los Angeles, I had traveled all over, from east coast to west, even to Greece and Italy! That gave me a bit of a taste of what it would be like to live outside my comfort zone in New Jersey. So about a year and a half ago, I packed everything that I knew and loved into a moving truck, and I drove across the country. Sure, it took me a few days, and maybe I rushed the travel process, but I traveled without even second-guessing myself, stopping here and there to see some major landmarks. That, for me, was huge. I’ve always been someone that reconsiders my options often, but ever since then, I’ve learned how to make carefully calculated moves to activate my life.
Moving out to Los Angeles turned out to be one of the most beneficial things in my life. That might have something to do with the fact that it’s almost always sunny in Los Angeles, but I think it’s more because I’m finally able to be completely and unabashedly myself. While my friends in New Jersey loved me and supported me (and continue to do so), I still felt limited by my home town. I felt limited by my location, my skills, my reputation, the people I knew, job opportunities, etc. It just wasn’t something that was conducive to my own personal growth.
Moving to California allowed me to let go of everything that I previously thought bad about myself, and the move also gave me the opportunity to flourish and do what I love. I’ve written over 30 songs since moving here, not to mention the song snippet ideas i’ve produced since being here. Plus, I’ve had the chance to work with other artists because there are so many out here. For once I feel like I’m actually doing what I enjoy, and if that doesn’t clear up some mental blocks, I don’t know what will.
It’s not like it has been completely easy living out here - I lost a good portion of time to COVID-19. I didn’t get a whole lot of time to thrive before the Coronavirus, but I’ve actually found that I’ve been working around it to thrive on my own. This means picking up lots of online and digital work, in place of ordinary things like a stable job or consistent recording. There are always work-arounds if you’re adaptable, and I’ve found that living in Los Angeles during a pandemic has made me more adaptable than I’ve ever been before. I’m not necessarily someone that thrived on rigidity, but I’ve always had a sense of consistency and stability. I feel like you have to adapt in order to survive out here, because from what I’ve experienced in California, every day brings new opportunities, and you have to be able to grasp them when they present themselves, and I love that. New Jersey didn’t bring me many new opportunities, and as I traveled more, the more I realized that there were in fact places that would benefit my life by visiting, and I wanted to be able to grasp that feeling and own it - not by visiting, but by taking up space in those places, which is what propelled me to make my move.
Yes I could have stayed my whole life in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, doing a job I hate, around all the same people I grew up with. But I wanted something more, and I wanted more opportunities to grow. And by moving to Los Angeles, I did exactly that: grow. Do I miss my friends from back home? Yes, every day. But I’ve been able to make new friends, and create my own unique story with my own unique experiences, and that’s something I wouldn’t trade for the world.