Ten Years in Los Angeles: I’m Not the Person Who Arrived Here

September 16, 2016.

It’s not a special date for most people (aside from those who may have a birthday… hi Erika!), but for me, it marks the day that I arrived in Los Angeles after 5 days of driving with my buddy Robin. This year marks 10 years since that move, which means I’ve now been in LA for a decade. What a wild concept.

Honestly, there are certain things that feel like yesterday for me, but I can also realize that the person who moved here belonged to an entirely different life when compared to now. It probably makes sense to start with why I came to LA in the first place right? Well, that move happened because I accepted a job running Growth Marketing for Five Four Club (rebranded as Menlo Club), which at the time was a huge opportunity for my career. Plus, moving to California felt like something I had dreamed about for a long time… I’ll explain.

I had always been in love with aspects of California. While I was in high school for example, I’d shop at Hollister (like most kids who couldn’t afford Abercrombie) and catch myself staring at the live cameras showing the Southern California beaches on the other side of the continent, thinking about how bad I wanted to visit there someday. I remember one time the girl at the register told me that a new store was opening in Huntington Beach and that I should visit, and I said “yeah I’d love to!” like I lived down the street. It’s funny to think about now. Also, like many others, I was obsessed with The O.C. and would have killed to be part of that life back then (and fun fact, I have a pretty crazy story involving Mischa Barton, so I did kind of live it for one night). Also when it came to music, my favourite artist was and still is Tupac Shakur, as well as The Game; both die-hard west coast rappers. For whatever reason, California has always occupied a space in my life one way or another but there’s no way I can ever say that moving here was ever part of the plan, let alone something that ever felt like a possibility.

Until I did.

I can’t tell you whether I spent a ton of time wondering whether the move would be permanent as I was so focused on whether I could actually pull it off. I remember having friends and family ask how long it would be for, and that was never an answer I had. I still don’t. More on that soon… but let me get back to setting the story.

Leading up to the move, my buddy Robin and I decided that a road trip would be a ton of fun and a cool way to see the West Coast of the US as we both hadn’t been. We flew from Toronto to Seattle and had an amazing time stopping in cities along the way like Portland and San Francisco, and even got to see the crack capital Eureka (not a highlight). About 5 days after he started driving, we finally had reached the destination: The Palazzo West in West Hollywood. I quickly went from road trip vacation mode to frantically scrambling to build a new life from scratch, including setting up the internet and getting furniture ready as I had to work on Monday. The majority of that weekend was securing furniture, building it, and making sure that my apartment functioned; but we did get to see a comedy show at the Laugh Factory (and met Chris D’elia outside, which felt very LA back then) so all in all I’d say it was a successful first weekend.

Mentally, I was beyond excited to start this new chapter, but I also remember being really worried about money. I wasn’t arriving with a financial cushion or perfectly constructed plan. I had a new job, an apartment, and enough confidence (or possibly stupidity) to believe that I’d figure the rest out. Unfortunately for the first few months, I wasn’t sure I would.

I Almost Left

What never made it to my early Instagram posts was how lonely moving to a new city can be, let alone Los Angeles. It’s got a reputation for being a place that can be extremely isolating, and I definitely felt that way in my early days. Toronto contained my entire life that had developed naturally over two decades; family, friends, routines, places I frequented, and the plans I could throw together the same day without needing a reason. Los Angeles on the other hand, had almost none of that.

There’s one night in particular that I remember coming home after the bar and crying for hours into the night. Nothing technically happened, but I remember feeling unbelievably homesick. It’s hard to remember every emotion I experienced around that time, but I do know that my overall feelings toward LA were that it felt extremely fake to me. I didn’t feel like I had many genuine relationships, and every interaction I had would be compared to the community I had left back in Toronto. Only a month or so into living there, and I’d begun to wonder whether moving there had been a mistake. I won’t lie in admitting that there were very real versions of my life I envisioned where I packed up everything and went back to Canada, but instead, I gave myself some distance.

Thankfully my best friend Davey and I had planned a two-and-a-half-week trip to Bali & Thailand which was enough of a culture shock (my first time in Asia) that I had forgotten my LA feelings temporarily. On top of that, I was only back for a few weeks before I then spent another couple of weeks back home for the holidays. Being away from LA gave me enough space to think about what I actually wanted out of my life and career rather than making an emotional decision based on loneliness.

Spoiler alert: I stayed.

I think part of that decision stemmed from the way that my Nana raised me, in that she taught me to never quit something before I’ve actually given it a proper chance and effort. I decided that a few months living in LA was not enough time to make a rational decision about my future, so I came back to LA and boy am I glad I did.

The Life 2016 Me Wanted

It’s funny to try and think about where I might be if I had pulled the trigger and gone back to Canada. Honestly, I have no clue where I’d be at this point, but I do know what I wouldn’t have experienced: working at Netflix, buying a home, travelling across the world, meeting Isa and somehow finding the kind of loving relationship that I hoped existed but was told didn’t.

These were not small goals in 2016, and they still aren’t today. They are pillars of the life I was hoping to build by moving out to California, and sometimes I need to do better at reminding myself that I’ve been able to achieve these things by planting my roots here, especially during periods like right now where I feel behind or frustrated with how life is going. I’m sure all of us can relate to this in some way in that we have parts of our life that we only dreamed about at an earlier time. Los Angeles has played an enormous role in making those dreams possible.

Being candid, I don’t think that I would have had the same career trajectory if I had remained in Canada. The opportunities, businesses, people, and scale of work available here were simply on a different level for the career I wanted to build than what I was finding in Toronto at the time.

This City Also Broke Me

So, I could have written a version of this anniversary essay that celebrates all the incredible things and achievements that LA has given me over the last ten years. The problem is that would sound like one long success story, and it’s been anything but that. Los Angeles has also broken me in ways that I didn’t realize were possible; whether it was toxic work environments, relationships that emotionally ruined me, and the recurring periods of loneliness. Don’t forget the multiple career setbacks, layoffs, overwhelming anxiety, and moments when I had absolutely no clue whether I was still building a life that I wanted or slowly destroying myself to build a life I thought others wanted to see.

To help manage the rollercoaster of feelings I was experiencing, I eventually started therapy in 2019. Looking back, that was probably one of the most important decisions I have made over the last decade in LA. If you’ve read my blog or know me, you know that I’ve spent years becoming very good at surviving things without necessarily understanding what they were doing to me internally. Therapy was something that forced me to look at the patterns I had avoided dealing with. It allowed me to understand my relationships differently, and also rediscover parts of myself that had been buried underneath the work and ambition that had consumed my life at this point. Oh, and I’m still working on all of that by the way, but I would like to think I’ve matured into a better human because I finally started doing the work back then.

Two years later in 2021, another major shift happened on two fronts: I bought my first apartment, and I finally left Five Four Group (Menlo Club), the job that brought me to LA back in 2016. On one hand, buying a place to live represented a level of stability that I never imagined having when I first moved here (or ever, really). On the other, leaving a job that had represented stability was terrifying. For a long time, I had convinced myself that I couldn’t leave even though the environment was beyond toxic and I knew that I was no longer growing there, personally or professionally. The problem is, there’s something psychologically difficult about leaving something that allows you to create your current circumstances.

For years, Five Four and LA were intertwined in my head where leaving the company almost felt like I was questioning my initial decision to move here, as well as if it had been worth it or not. I eventually realized that it was worth it, and that the two didn’t need to be combined any longer. Leaving ultimately opened up the door for my career to grow again, and showed me that there were other opportunities to do that despite feeling afraid that there wouldn’t be. Ironically the company that I joined after leaving Five Four would go bankrupt within six months of my joining and lead to my first stint of unemployment so you can imagine the anxiety and questioning myself I was doing during this time. The silver lining? It opened up the chance to work for Netflix, which is now one of my career highlights and led me to find an incredible friend and mentor in Natalia (my boss at Netflix.Shop).

Fast forward to later that summer, I’d meet Isa as well.

These four moments in my life: therapy, buying a home, leaving Five Four, and meeting Isa, probably define the decade a lot better than any resume or timeline can. These are four moments that have helped me become the person writing today.

There Was a Cost

That’s not to say that there weren't costs associated with these moments, or living a life in LA in general. When you are building your life far from home, an opportunity here is usually replacing an opportunity somewhere else. In my case, it was Toronto/Canada. The biggest costs I can think of on the top of my head were the years where my immigration situation meant I couldn’t leave the US while I waited for my green card to process. Staying put in one country meant that I missed multiple holidays as well as some of my closest friends' weddings. I missed major moments in the lives of the people I care most about, and there’s not really a way for me to fully describe how hurtful that continues to feel at times. I still have a few friends whose children I haven’t met yet, not on purpose. Just because coordinating plans is a bit tough when you have thousands of miles in between, and limited time when I am back home.

There’s also friends in general whom I used to see consistently, and now I haven’t seen in years. My relationships have changed because distance changes them, despite nobody doing anything wrong. That’s probably been one of the largest ‘costs’ of moving abroad. It’s a wild thought to realize that I’ve built an incredible career and life in Los Angeles, but I’ve done it thousands of miles away from many of the people who knew me before any of this existed. There’s really no way to know the alternative version of my life if I had stayed in Canada, or had moved home when I initially wanted to. I guess that’s what the multiverse is for? Hah.

If I had to guess, I would have probably remained close to certain people, even strengthening the friendships with people I wasn’t as close with in 2016. I would have probably visited my family a lot more. I wouldn't have missed my friends' weddings, birthdays, or the random Thursday patio happy hours. Regardless, I don’t regret moving, but it has taught me that every decision you make comes with a cost somewhere else in your life.

I Still Don’t Have the Community I Left Behind

Something that still affects me, as I value the relationships in my life a lot, is that I’ve lived in LA for ten years now and still don’t feel like I have the same kind of community that I had back in Canada. I have friends in LA that I cherish dearly and mean a lot to me, but there just aren't as many of them. I’m not ignorant enough to think this is just me though, and I think all of us can realize that this is partially what happens in adulthood regardless of your location. Friendships become harder to create once you’re not in school or settings where you’re constantly surrounded by people your age and live a few minutes away. I also think the dynamic of LA has been a part of it, as everybody is at least a 30-minute drive away (if not longer), which makes spontaneous activities very difficult to do. I know some of my friends in New York don’t have as hard a time being social since everything is a subway ride away.

Toronto still contains a social history that LA can never recreate because you can’t manufacture decades of shared experiences. For a long time, I’ve viewed that as something that LA was missing, but now I think about it a little differently. I don’t think every place needs to provide the same thing or feelings. LA has given me opportunities and experiences that Toronto never could have, and Toronto contains history and relationships that will never go away. I’d like to think I am lucky enough to have both.

Would I Do It Again?

So, a lot of people ask me if I had the chance to go back in time and make the decision all over again, would I do it? Yes. Absolutely no hesitation in giving you that answer either.

That doesn’t mean that every single day for the past 10 years is worth romanticizing either, but it does mean that when I look at the totality of the last decade, I can recognize that I’ve created a better version of myself that came from the decision I made back in 2016. I had a yearning to leave a place that I was extremely comfortable in, and that allowed me to learn who I was without it. I also discovered that career success would not automatically make me happy (and am still learning that). I also learned that sometimes leaving a toxic situation (both personally & professionally) is more important than preserving the stability it provides.

Therapy. Heartbreak. Friendships. Failures. All of these are things I needed to help prove to myself that I could build a life somewhere completely unfamiliar. Yes, I probably could have learned some of these back in Toronto or somewhere else, but I ultimately chose to learn them here.

I Don’t Think I’ll Be Here for Another Ten Years

During this ten-year anniversary, I find myself not just reflecting, but also thinking about the future. Something I’ve realized is that I love Los Angeles. I mean, it’s literally tattooed on me. BUT, I also don’t think it’s where I want to spend the next ten years of my life. Isa and I have had multiple conversations about eventually leaving, the problem is we don’t know where to go at the moment, and we also don’t know when.

In the past, this type of uncertainty would make me feel like I needed to figure it out immediately so I knew how to curate our life path. If LA isn’t forever, I need to know the answer of where & when is next. Thankfully, I don’t need that type of immediate answer nowadays. I made an enormous move back in 2016 because an opportunity arrived and it felt right to take advantage of. I don’t want the next move to happen just because we feel like ten years sounds like enough, but because something comes along that makes the next version of our lives better.

So until then, LA is home.

Ten Years Later

I could keep writing about the last decade in LA, but to be honest, I’ve already been doing that if you go through my essays on the blog and this post is probably getting long enough. With that, I’ll try to close this out.

The Canadian who arrived at the Palazzo in 2016 had no idea what was coming. He had no clue that he would almost move home a few months later. He also had no clue that he would eventually manage millions of dollars in marketing budgets, work at Netflix, buy a home, go to therapy, experience some of the most painful career setbacks, get his heart broken over and over, travel around the world, and meet the person he’d want to build his future with. Simply, he had no idea how many versions of Tyrell would be created here.

If I could go back and tell that version of Tyrell something, I don’t think I would warn him or try to prevent the difficult parts. I also don’t think I’d mention the achievements either. I’d simply tell him to stay, give it a chance, and that Nana was right all along.

So ten years later, I can look around at this city that has been strange, difficult, exciting, and occasionally ridiculous and recognize that it’s given me something far more important than the California visit I had dreamed of while staring at the beach cameras in Hollister. It gave me the space to become someone I didn’t have the ability to imagine yet, and despite not knowing where I’ll be ten years from now, it’s comforting knowing that a huge part of that person will have been built here.