Why I left San Diego, and why I wasn't even supposed to be there in the first place...and second place.(part one)

I’ve lived in San Diego twice now both times completely unintentional, honestly.

Let’s start from the beginning. I’m originally from Orange County, California.

In 2015, I moved to Portland, Oregon for the first time my first real move out of my childhood home and into adulthood. I moved with an ex, who isn’t especially important to this story except for one detail: I told him I was leaving Orange County with or without him. Not because I didn’t care I did but because I already knew my next chapter had only two possible settings: Portland or Los angeles Unsurprisingly, Los angeles was not an option for him.

To me, though, it was the dream. I felt most like myself there anonymous, yet completely alive. Even during short day trips, I felt present in a way I couldn’t explain. Still, Portland won.

I had only been to Portland once before, on a club soccer trip when I was ten years old, but when we arrived to Portland as adults, we fell in love immediately. I described it as a city that felt like I had invented it myself. It was almost too perfect: beer, wine, trees, casual hikes, old architecture, seasons, thrifting everything I loved, neatly packaged into one place. Everything except one thing.

That feeling.That anonymous, electric sense of being the center of your own movie the thing people now call “main character energy.” Portland never quite gave me that. As charming and aligned as it was, it couldn’t touch me the way Los Angeles did.

Eventually, my ex and I broke up not devastating, just inevitable. I stayed in Portland another year and a half on my own before deciding it was time for something bigger. Bigger meant Los Angeles.

I arrived hopeful, living out of an Airbnb, convinced things were finally lining up. And then they didn’t. I couldn’t find an apartment to save my life. I couldn’t land a serving job which, frankly, is my specialty. I get hired everywhere. Until suddenly, I didn’t.

That’s when my sister stepped in and said, “Just come to San Diego for a year. Be near me. Be near the cousins.” She was a longtime bartender there and promised she could help me get a job easily. So I packed up my life, my French bulldog Lola, and moved south. True to her word, I interviewed at Barley Mash in downtown San Diego and got the job. Then I got my apartment second floor, of course.

I really tried. I gave it everything I had.

But San Diego wasnt.....me.

People couldn’t understand it. The sun! The beach! The parties! Everyone’s so friendly—how could you not like it here? I never knew how to answer without offending someone or bruising their pride. The truth is, San Diego is wonderful if you’re from there, or if you’re not from California at all.

To me, it had no seasons. No built-in history. No real grit. No soul unless you count a kind of forced surfer aesthetic. Ironically, Orange County, where I’m from, has a far more authentic surf culture. And yes, I know I’m being judgmental now. But clarity matters.

Barbieland just wasn’t for me.

So the plan was simple: move to Los Angeles as soon as my one-year lease ended.

Finally my dream city at my finger tips.

And then… COVID happened.

to be continued........