In a few days I’ll have officially lived in Los Angeles for a decade. Throughout my time it’s been hinted that you’re not really a resident till you cross that 10 year threshold so I guess now I can feel more justified in my chaotic love for the Dodgers. Ten years happening during a time when I have to be distant from all the people and places that made LA my home seems... oddly fitting? Sure I wish I could celebrate this milestone by getting a drink at my favorite bar with my close friends but this year I was forced to fall in love with a new kind Los Angeles and really test out how much I like it here. This is not how I imagined anything to be, but most of what has made LA special is not what I imagined it to be either.
From the moment I decided to move to LA from Lakeland, Florida to touching down at LAX was just three weeks. Things were not going too well for me in Lakeland, which was my college town and I had graduated a year prior. I was working at Victoria’s Secret and although I Ioved my co-workers and still talk to most of them today I knew that I was meant to be somewhere else. A friend told me they knew someone who signed up to be a live-in nanny and that’s exactly what I did once I hit my Lakeland capacity one Sunday night. Exactly three weeks later I was moving my stuff into a very nice family’s home in Manhattan Beach and I never looked back.
I luckily had a really great support system that encouraged my big move. My parents both had huge moves during their twenties (my mom Pennsylvania to Florida, and my dad Bulgaria to the US). When I was in college I had a film professor that was desperate for me to move to LA- so much so that every Sunday when he dropped his kids off at Sunday School (of course I taught kid’s Sunday School, c’mon) he would walk away yelling over his shoulder “I pray that next week you won’t be here!”. The only person who didn’t support me was a random customer at Victoria’s Secret who invited me to some event and I declined by happily stating “I’m actually moving to Los Angeles next week.” Upon hearing that this woman fell silent, took a step back and shouted “But that’s where the bad people live!”. A stunned silence fell over me, my co-workers and all the other customers waiting in line. She went on to demand that I write my name on a piece of paper so she could “plead the blood of Jesus over me to change my mind.” But other than that every single thing fell into place for me to move here. Even my birthday that year even fell on 9-02-10.
I can break my ten years into three parts that coincide to where I lived at the time: Manhattan Beach, Los Feliz and Highland Park. You could also call these years: Christian, Crying and My 30s.
Christian
When I first landed I still had both feet into religion, but definitely one of those feet was barely in the water. I went to church and prayed but everything else was slipping away. When I lived in Florida the friends I partied with were still church friends who also loosely believed in God. So coming here this was my first time hanging out with people that had no religious background and let me tell you- it. was. thrilling. I finally felt like I could breathe and not have to justify every decision I made through the lens of how it could potentially serve God. Those Christian years began with God but the mom I worked/lived with helped me to finally open up to new experiences. She’s cemented a mom role in my life and Manhattan Beach feels like a hometown to me- one that I occasionally visit to catch up with the family, get advice and receive a free meal. These were the years that I lost a god but gained a family.
Crying
This is where I was fully on my own figuring out how to navigate my twenties and cried just about everywhere. I’ll probably touch more on it in another newsletter but these years were a lot of failing at things and being very sad and then understanding that I'm just gonna fail forever and that's okay. During this time I was introduced to all my friends, solidified what I wanted to do and did oh so much improv. Sure they were also my mid to late twenties so they were formidable to me as just about anyone but LA really began to seem like a forever place to me through those tears.
Time to pause if you need and watch a gibbon freak out over a hedgehog.
My 30’s
And now that you are back- the latter part of the decade has been… fine! I’m still growing and learning but these are the years I'm able to finally put into practice what I’ve learned and hope to cushion the blows a lot easier. And yeah, there are still blows as evidenced by a super vulnerable picture I am posting below to really show you how dedicated I am to baring it all for a bi-weekly newsletter that you probably fished out of your spam.
This was January 2nd and my cat wouldn’t stop throwing up. Once she started puking blood at 10pm I had to rush her to the only open ER vet. I had never been to an overnight vet before and I got there just after 11pm. I waited for hours as a carousel of people came in with their very sick pets, some of them even dead. It was a scene the Safdie brothers wish they wrote.

When I thought “hey look it’s after 2am and this will be funny in the morning”
I was finally called back around 2:15am where they told me that in order to do the proper x-rays I would need to hand over $800. And again since you signed up for my newsletter I will bare it all out for you right now: at that moment I did not have $800 to give them (don’t tell that part to the person I was ten years ago). I immediately broke down and the woman had to slowly back out of the room to give me a minute to figure out how to properly tell them I couldn't help my cat that night.

Less than 30 minutes later when things stopped being funny and 2020 was nodding “yes, yes come to me”
Ten minutes later they would counter with a lower number and it ended up working out. I sat in the waiting room while they did the x-rays and started talking to a woman who brought her old blind dog in because he was having trouble breathing that night. She was in her 50s but lived with “young stoners like you.” She was also a firefighter from New York and had her dog for, I believe, 15 years. Soon they called her dog’s name to be examined and she disappeared leaving me to try and keep myself awake since it was close to 4am, I had been crying and this was on the heels of NYE. Soon the woman returned with her dog who would be okay, phew. They prescribed her dog some medicine and for some reason she showed me the prescription and that’s when I noticed her name was also Beth. I called it out and we both took a second to take in this odd synchronicity. Off firefighter Beth went and soon extremely tired Beth was on her way home just before sunrise not knowing she would spend the entire next day at a bougie vet that used to be a place she spent thousands of dollars taking improv classes at (the true circle of life for my decade in LA).
But through that ordeal what will always stick out to me is the moment I realized that woman and I shared a name. It was another check mark that I was in the right place even though I felt like I was in the worst place in the world. This is a story that over the years I’ll probably forget what time I actually got there or the memory might slip about the adult daughter sitting next to me who begged her mom all night to get fries while their dog was possibly dying in the back. I might miss details of the three men who spoke in a slavic language that burst through the door at 1am with no pet and rushed to the back then left 15 minutes later. I can see the memory of the next day fading that I survived off fancy box water and watched a man throw his credit card at a vet tech and I’ve already forgotten details that would have jazzed up this newsletter. But I’ll never forget that in this deeply sad time there was another Beth right next to me. Another example of things never, ever turning out the way I imagined them to be and further cementing my love for my time in Los Angeles.
I wish there were better circumstances right now and I wouldn’t regret one single bit if quarantine never happened but making the best of this shitty situation and reflecting on ten years in LA means really knowing who I am stripped away from the things I thought were most important. It’s only me and the physical city of Los Angeles and I still love being here. I've been alone for the last month since my roommate was out of town and as much as it made me crave personal interaction more and wanting to go back to the way things were socially, I can pat myself on the back that it didn't ruin me. I’m sure more things will bring me down but reflecting over the small victories that lead me to feeling secure when I should be drowning solidifies even more the decision I made one Sunday night ten years ago and I’m ultimately just really happy that I never married a worship pastor (which 100% would have happened if that Victoria’s Secret customer’s prayers were answered).
re: what’s going on
A targeted Instagram finally got me and now I have a summer hat. The other day the 3 year old I nanny asked to wear my summer hat and immediately started singing Old McDonald Had a Farm. Roasted but I really do love her so much.
I’ve been using this app/website for a year now but just in case you haven’t heard of it- download Pocket! It bookmarks all the articles online that you want to read in one place and a secret trick I’ve learned is that it circumvents paywalls when you save something to your pocket and read it on their website.
The girl I nanny and I have been going to the Huntington in Pasadena a lot lately and maybe I’m just really pandemic horny these days but the desert section is all boobs, butts and dicks (unfortunately no butt pics).
I haven’t read one single page of a book but I did watch the reality shows Alone and Selling Sunset in a matter of 4 days and my brain is so mush that I can’t believe I actually got a newsletter out this week. I recommend both shows and I recommend watching them at the speed I did because I would like some brain mush company right now.
I’m sad I can’t play baseball this summer but look at this sweet ass picture our manager extraordinaire made to keep spirits high this no season 2020.

Thanks for reading- I’m still figuring this all out so I really appreciate it and see ya in two weeks, baby!! :)