18 Sep Making Moves

Once Catalyst ended in 2017, I booked a flight to LA for a 12-day trip. I set up over 20 meetings within that time frame that I scheduled on spreadsheets. Who me? Use a spreadsheet? No. Freaking. Way. I set the goal to reconnect with executives, see what work is out there, and decide if I would really want to live there.

A friend who produces for HGTV asked me to work for her on set during this trip, and I thought, “I do not even live here yet, and I am being offered work. This must be a good sign!” I weighed the pro’s and con’s carefully, soaked up the inspiring view from the Griffith Observatory, and I decided that it was time for me to make a life-changing decision: I was moving to LA.

When I say “life-changing” I truly mean that in every sense. I was not going to make such a drastic move and repeat the same pattern. “Crazy is doing the same thing multiple times and expecting a different result,” right? I decided to put my actor hat away and fully pursue producing and writing for television. I wanted a career for myself, and I did not want to step foot in a restaurant as a server ever again. I don’t care if you want fries with that.

I could do an entire blog on how to move from NYC to LA, and maybe I should, but for now I want to keep it short-and-sweet. My friend and I discussed a timeline and settled on May 1, 2018 for our cross-country move. We came out mid-April for a week to find our new home and came across a bungalow with outdoor space. You can barely get a shoebox in NYC for the same price, and the thought of a bungalow seemed so LA and like a dream. Also, I was done using my fire escape as a makeshift balcony, and seeing this blank canvas of an outdoor space brought me so much joy!

I hired cross-country movers who were actually terrible human beings to deal with and waited over two weeks to receive my belongings. I had my new home, my new roommate, eventually all of my things, and then the work began. “Ok, so how am I going to pay rent?”