A Year in La-La Land.

A year ago today, I moved to Los Angeles.

At the time, the move felt like a cop-out. I had spent seven years transversing the globe, seeking out new people, new cultures and new experiences. I managed to build a life and community in Seattle, backpack and hitchhike across southern Africa, volunteer in Argentina, and teach in Korea. If I lived within 120 miles of my hometown, would I still have those kind of fulfilling experiences? Would there be adventure and challenges?

Turns out, more than I could imagine. I feel like over the last few years, through all this travel and excitement, I had started to discover the person I'm going to be. Here in LA, I've actually had the chance to start being that person. Through battles with malaria, facing bandits as I crossed borders, meeting street kids, becoming a teacher, climbing the Great Wall and hearing the rush of Iguazu Falls, forming bonds and saying so many goodbyes - I had uncovered the kind of person I wanted to be, the things and people I valued most in life. Now it was time to apply it.

Los Angeles, like most big cities in the world, is a place of deep contrast. It is a town of azure swimming pools and bloody gang wars. Of illiterate children and sweet young starlets. Golden beaches and the salty smell of the green sea. Dilapidated houses and the powdery gust of car exhaust. And in my year here, I've had the incredible opportunity to witness it all.

I moved to Los Angeles because of a job offer with an investment firm. I had sworn off LA years before, sure that it was nothing but a grimy city swarming with frivolous actors/models/producers/DJs. But the job sounded exciting, and so a city that had always seemed to have nothing to offer me, now sparkled with opportunity.

In the six months I worked for the investment firm, I lunched at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. I met clients for cocktails in the Four Seasons. I had meetings with Congressional staffers. I sat next to Dr. Phil and attended an event at the home of the couple who owns Fiji water. It was surreal, and so LA. I half-expected Shelley Long to appear at any moment in her Wilderness Girl outfit, brandishing a cigarette holder and a dirty martini.

But it wasn't what I set out to do with my life, and I didn't feel like I was utilizing any of the lessons I had learned. With this realization, I accepted a job as an Outreach Advisor in South LA, working with foster youth in neighborhoods like Watts, Compton and Inglewood. The six months that followed showed me the underbelly of the city, the juxtaposition to Beverly Hills and Hollywood. I witnessed convenience store robberies, dealt with absentee teenage fathers and county budget cuts. Acronyms like DCFS and CSW and TRC became part of my vocabulary (Department of Children and Family Services, Children's Social Worker and Transition Resource Center).

And I started writing again. I thought moving to LA meant settling down. I thought it meant I wouldn't have any more stories to tell. But the stories are there. Clusters, bundles, multitudes of stories. Some of them mine, and some of them others. In many places, those stories overlap, like the unnamed fault lines below the surface of Los Angeles, always threatening to swallow my new home whole.

It seems a fitting time to share some of those stories here. I hope you'll keep reading.