It feels like a lifetime ago when I lived in SoCal. But last Thursday, as I beelined to the bar to grab emergency ear plugs upon entry to SideBar Nightclub in San Diego, I was vividly transported back to my first "adult" era in Los Angeles.

The lights lining the ceiling pulsed in a way that prompted shades inside as a necessity rather than a "coolness-factor" stylistic choice. My chief financial officer laughed (but also likely cringed inside) as round after round of Don Julio bottles were served to our table. A coworker I'd met only 72 hours prior was shouting something earnest in my ear about product roadmaps that I could only half make out. I stood there, ear plugs successfully procured (thank goodness a kind bartender gave me his spare for free!), and had the strangest sensation of dissociation/déjà vu. I had stood in many a room exactly like this one, almost a decade ago, but I had been a completely different person at the time.

I've had more mental headspace this week than I've had in months. This time spent traveling (a safe distance from my impossibly large family responsibilities, energized by conversations with new people asking me questions I haven't been asked in a while) is giving me the opportunity to reflect on what's important to me. Even the familiarity of San Francisco last week couldn't give me that same room to notice patterns I'd been missing.

At 21 in SoCal, my fever-dream evenings were spent at clubs along Sunset Boulevard or bordering Skid Row, shepherded in by a much-older promoter with a hodge-podge of body-conscious, awkwardly outfitted girls (this was still solidly in the era of "you will not get in if you're not in heels and a miniskirt" culture). I had no ear plugs. I certainly had no idea what a "product roadmap" was. I found my sense of aliveness in the pulse of the bass, the drug-runs to the bathroom, the fleeting attention of performatively rich men.

Eight years later, I find myself in the same environment… and yet what is giving me life this time is being surrounded by people who are curious, ambitious, energetic, and obsessed with solving complex problems while we strive for something bigger.

Now, I debated framing this week as a story of “Kate considers moving to San Diego.” And, to be fair, I am lightly considering it. Having lived both in the (marginally) warmer waters of Los Angeles and along the chillier shore of the Bay, moving even further down the California coast to San Diego feels like another untapped potential life path. Morning runs along the beach. Ability to be awe-inspired by an open horizon line. Yoga on the sand. Just two to three hours from my other spiritual birthplaces in the desert. A downtown twenty minutes from the sand and twenty minutes from trail-covered hills. Ten to fifteen degrees warmer than San Francisco (I often miss the heat when I'm in the Bay). Even the two San Diego-based colleagues I explained my current wandering existence to scoffed at the fact I was even considering other locales to call home. "I'll see you here soon," one defiantly declared.

On paper, this place is perfect— everything I'd need as a visual and spiritual home. But I am grappling with a deepening question bouncing around in my head: is the place even the important variable?

When I first moved to an eccentric bohemian apartment building in Venice Beach in 2018, closer to the sand than to Abbott Kinney, I first realized people could live this way. Then in San Francisco, I discovered what a port town turned industrious city with nature interwoven could feel like. Hell, I've even spent some time digital nomad-ing in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica — same exact ocean, vastly different coastline, different breed of ambitious people (though as that was during the crypto heyday, Santa Teresa was essentially the Silicon Valley of Central America).

But as I’ve aged, I’ve evolved while that Pacific Ocean has remained constant. At 21, the Sunset Boulevard clubs felt alive because of who I could be when I was in them. Now, at 29, the SideBar Nightclub feels alive because of who I'm in it with. If you stripped all that away — same nightclub, sans the curious-and-ambitious company layer — would a return to SoCal feel the same?

As I age, I find myself becoming more and more convinced of the trope of community being both the pillar of existence and a constantly chosen practice. Different cities absolutely do have unique personalities and energies that shape us when we're in them. But the deeper texture of any place I've ever truly loved was cultivated by the people I was with.

It's a mistake for me to think that each next city could be the potential solution to all of my problems. "If I just move to San Diego, I'll have the morning runs and the open horizon and the version of myself I want to be" is a thought steeped in naïveté. The place can offer different inspiration to draw from, but the continued practice is where depth is created.

One of my absolute favorite things about working in tech is that when I come across and use a product that I love, I can ask the question, "Do I want to go work here?" That's exactly what happened with beehiiv — with one foot in tech and the other in the creator economy, it was the platform I enjoyed the most by far as I explored my YouTube career. And here I am! One year later, ripping Don Julio shots with a CEO I respect and ~100 crazy people sharing the same goals. But truth be told, the location barely matters when the people are what make the experience.

Which of course begs the slightly uncomfortable question I may be avoiding: am I looking for a specific city, or am I looking for permission to keep building a community wherever I am at the moment? Is the work of "finding home" actually the work of practicing home, no matter where I wake up that day? And if that's true, what does that mean for someone who is untethered and wandering by nature?

I write this from the coffee shop / lunch spot in SAN airport (grilled cheese & tomato soup combo dangerously close to dripping on the computer keys but I'm too hungover to care — see above: Don Julio was flowing). There is sand on my jeans from a final beach meditation session earlier — apologies in advance to the Alaska Airlines flight crew.

Onward to the next destination. I wonder which version of me shows up there.

Curiously,

Kate