Last March, I decided to take a trip to Los Angeles. The seasonal dreariness of Boston had overstayed its welcome, as it does every year, and I needed to see the sun again.
Not 24 hours in, I began to notice a change within myself. There was something here for me, and it was clear. It flourished throughout my entire body — something about the way I operate resonated with this city. I didn’t know what exactly,, but there was something, some kind of opportunity here. This phenomenon is called the “LA Moment,” and I embraced it with open arms.
I remember really not wanting to leave, so I ended up pushing back my flight back five days! I had to go back eventually, and I did. But as soon as I met my parents at Logan Airport after my flight home, things became real — “Wuddya think about me moving out to Los Angeles?”
It was finally out there in the universe.
I spent April cleaning out my Davis Square apartment, wrapping up all projects at my job in the Financial District, and saying many, many heartfelt “I’ll see ya soons” to my friends and family.
See, the five or so years leading up to this moment were savagely scheduled. Somehow, I managed to hold a full-time college agenda, a full-time job in luxury retail, a couple of part-time internships, graduate, move on the a nine-to-five, and fill in the cracks with blogging and dating.
I was definitely safe and stable, and then somehow, I decide to throw it all away for a gut feeling. Who the hell do I think I am?!
For the first time in the better half of a decade I made an uncalculated move with no fucking clue what I was doing. But I did it… and here we are today, a year later.
On May 8, 2017, I gassed up a my jam-packed SUV and hit the road for LA. The trip out was insane, and I still need to write that story for you all, but after about six days of driving cross-country and a mandatory Target trip, I arrived at my new apartment.
Now, the only thing I had lined up in my new stomping grounds was an apartment and a few friends, including my roommate, Bri, from back home. The next step was to find a job.
I continuously tweaked my new resume, applied to jobs, and got absolutely nowhere until I landed an interview with a local PR agency called Dog and a Duck PR, located right near my apartment.
“This would be perfect — public relations AND dogs are in the office,” I said to myself. Sure, it would have been great, but even after two follow-ups, they didn’t get back to me. I started to question myself and everything I had been through up until this point. Had I made the right choices? Had I done everything I could to boost my career path?
Persevering, the next step was to get to know the locals. There’s no better way to do that than by working in retail, as far as I’m concerned. For the next five months, I found myself back on the shoe floor with Nordstrom at The Grove. This plan worked very well. I met the people who would turn into my Sunday Night Movie Crew. I met an amazing girl who I’ve been dating for about six months now, and I made eye contact with Bill Nye the Science Guy which was fucking incredible.
August rolled through, and I got tapped on the shoulder by my colleague, Melissa, Massachusetts-bred now living in LA, to come help with her marketing start-up. For a few months, I toggled between shoes and social media strategies, looking to get this thing off the ground.
Startups without funding aren’t known for paying well, and I knew that, but this was a step in the right direction, so the first week in October, I left Nordstrom to work for Social Media Relations full-time.
Happy Fall hustlers ??? • Introducing our newest member to the SMR family @the_next_gentleman ???
The jump to SMR was like leaping off a cliff into water. I was at the forefront of a brand new company, which was exciting and insanely confusing all at once. We would work hard, eat, learn how to use new tools, debate, take calls, and solve problems. I got to go to Canada for the first time to help a client rebrand a recently purchased candy shop! The trip was kind of a disaster because they didn’t have their shit together, but it helped teach me the importance of being able to work with a volatile client, which is key.
In late November, I started to worry. The longer I worked for SMR, the the longer I would have to stretch my dollar. My bank account was drying up and I had arrived to the point where thoughts like selling my car, tapping into my 401K, or moving back started to enter my mind. I even had to ask my roommate to float me $200 for utilities for something like two months, which I’ve never, ever had to do.
But there are two things you can choose to be in this situation — a quitter or a fighter. I chose the latter.
Then I remembered something my roommate said months back; “If you can make it past six months in LA, you’re doing pretty well.” November marked the seventh month for me and that was even more motivation to not quit — not yet.
I spent a whole month leading up to my holiday trip back to Boston going back over my resume in hopes of landing a better-paying job in communications, regardless of the distance.
This time, my resume looked miles better than the garbage I had forged back in May. I had a reason to hustle, I had real, actual motives for wanting this new job — my independence. On my second go-around, I took a handful of phone interviews, one in-person, but nothing was clicking.
I had a “fuck it all” moment and decided to adjust my approach. I emailed two of my old blog contacts back in Boston to ask them how I could make myself more hirable on paper and where my selling points were. The second call I made was to a man named Dominic, who said we should sit down for a cold, December coffee in Boston’s North End, near his office, and talk about things.
On December 28, we had that coffee. Over the course of an hour, we discussed everything from my resume to The Next Gentleman, his company, DPA Communications, and how he may have had a contact for me. The last thing that was said was “You know, I was going to try to see If I could get you in with this agency who’s already out there but, uh, I may just want to scoop you up for myself.” Even if nothing came of this, the looming weight had been LAUNCHED off my shoulders. Somebody thought I had value, and that was a start.
I left Boston on January 9th. Seeing friends and family, celebrating the holidays, and taking that meeting helped relieve the stress I had brought back from LA.
My grandmother, who has been my most active supporter all throughout college and still today, drove me to the Logan Express shuttle close to home. As we pulled into the drop-off section, I got a phone call — it was from Dominic.
I could feel my heart start to beat faster as I picked up the phone and said, “Hey Dom, what’s up, man?”
Over the last week, Dominic had talked things over with his EVP and business partner, Lisa, and together, they decided to open up DPA Communications Los Angeles with me at the wheel.
My ears consumed the this sentence and sent my brain all the way back to March, during my visit to the west coast. That hazy opportunity I saw back in the spring, that gut feeling I got, this was it.
Everything up until this point — the physical, mental, and emotional demands of college and work, the hands I had shaken while networking for The Next Gentleman, the decision to give up my stability over a feeling was so this one single moment could happen — and here it is, with a public relations agency from BOSTON, no less.
The obvious question, at least from my family, was, “Well, couldn’t you have just worked for them back in Boston?”
The answer is no.
There is no reward for playing it safe, which I could have.
There is no way to grow when you’re comfortable, which I was.
There is nothing to learn when you dismiss opportunity, which I welcomed.
The struggle to maintain independence in a new place; that unhappiness with my progress was what made me hustle harder and look for solutions. And now I’m working a dream job with opportunity for personal and professional growth.
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