I realized a couple of nights ago that last week was my five-year anniversary of my move to Los Angeles and that Monday was my five-year anniversary at work.  It’s still hard to believe I’ve been here so long, since it’s the longest I’ve ever worked in a single place (despite being promoted a couple of times here), and also since just about everyone I knew back East kept telling me I’d never leave the Northeast.  Everyone expected me to either stay in Boston or move back to New York.  And I was so unused to the locale that I actually had to keep a Post-It note on my car’s dashboard for my first three months out here that said “Ocean’s on the LEFT” because that concept completely was alien to everything I’d known for a quarter-century.

It’s been a pretty wild ride these past five years.  I’ve hung with celebrities, hit parties at swanky Hollywood locales, been to hundreds of shows and done the usual L.A. tourist things.  But what’s more important to me is that I moved out here knowing only 3 people and, since then, constructed several social circles replete with awesome people.  I’ve gotten back into working in the industry that I love, and I’ve excelled at it.  And — most importantly — I’ve rediscovered what makes me happy and what makes me tick… I’ve become more of who I am, especially over the past 3 years.  That’s not to say that Los Angeles is the cause of all that, but it did happen thanks to my move here. 

Will I move away?  I don’t know.  I’m still at that stage where I don’t feel like I have a hard-and-fast home, per se, just a city that I feel comfortable in because I’ve been here for so long and I know my way around.  If the right opportunity were to arise, I’d be sad to leave the people here behind, but I think I’d be okay with leaving.  The one thing that I truly learned from this experience is that I am able to survive and flourish on my own — I moved to the second-largest city in the country, knowing only 3 other people, and I built a pretty nice life for myself.  Any fears I might have had about walking into a completely unknown situation and being able to hold my own have been allayed.

But yes, I still retain my East Coast sensibiliites — despite the song… I walk in L.A.