It’s been about a year since I moved to Los Angeles. So far, it’s felt like the right decision.

I spent the previous three and a half years in Philly, a city I still think is great. But by December 2022, it was clear that Philly was no longer a great fit for the lifestyle I wanted to live.

My checklist for when I moved back to Philly at age 24 wasn’t very sophisticated.

1. East coast city (near my family)
2. Lot of college-educated young people (similar to myself)
3. Cheap drinking (or at least cheaper than Las Vegas, where I was before)
4. Good public transportation

I moved in January 2020 and had two months of great living. Then, yeah, pandemic. I left the in-person job I moved to Philly for in 2020, then took two remote jobs in part to stay in Philly. I hoped things would go back to normal and, at first in 2021 it seemed that way. I moved into a spacious three-bedroom townhouse with friends. I became a regular at some places.

Adjusting priors

Yet as much as I wanted things to be back to normal, they weren’t. The covid surges of 2021 and 2022 were not to be ignored. As a pretty covid-conscious guy, I preferred outdoor bars and restaurants. My friends tolerated that for the few months of the year with good weather, not as much when it was colder. Pretty understandable. That meant I’d have limited months out of the year I could enjoy myself fully.

When temperatures dropped in fall 2021, I fled for the warmth of my grandma’s condo in South Florida. I went to the beach most days. I got a lot of movement. I had a nice time. I got back to Philly and was like, nope can’t go walk for an hour when it’s 20 degrees out.

I said for many years I wanted to live somewhere warm. First time I recall was telling my mom in 2016 I wanted to move to San Diego. And I tolerated places like Philly because I liked the social scene. But it was hard to put the genie back in the bottle after spending a few weeks in Florida.

I didn’t act on anything at the time, but once fall 2022 emerged (being bedridden for three months with covid provided a lot of time to think about this), a part of me knew that would be my last winter in Philly.

It’s worth mentioning that a not-insignificant reason for not leaving Philly in 2021 or 2022 was that since I had read the 4-Hour Work Week in college, I had planned to take a year off to be a digital nomad. In fact, my job search in late 2019 was going so poorly I had been considering just doing it immediately in January 2020. In 2020 and early 2021, I saved up the cash to afford it. But with covid still around, locals increasingly frustrated with digital nomads, and reading the reflections of many people who tried it and found it incredibly isolating, I eventually admitted to myself this was something I no longer wanted to do.

I had been avoiding making major commitments because I had this plan. And once I let go of that plan, I felt relief as I was able to focus more on what present-day me wanted to do. It was pretty easy to acknowledge that if I wasn’t already living in Philly, I probably would not have moved there at that moment.

I wanted to move. Where to go was a completely different question.

The candidates

My wish list for a new city was:

1. Warm weather
2. More of a tech scene than Philly
3. I have some friends already there
4. Don’t need to drive everywhere (either walkable, bikeable, or public transportation)

I didn’t love any of my options. I came up with LA (including Long Beach), San Diego, Miami, and Austin. Ideally, I would have spent a few weeks in each place, but my landlord asked us six months in advance if we’d be renewing in Philly (lol) and both my roommates said yes and were waiting on me. So I’d have time to go to one.

Miami and Austin were the two easiest to eliminate. Miami felt too similar to Las Vegas, an environment I wasn’t eager to return to. I didn’t want to deal with hurricanes, or rain every day. And it felt like it was just one archetype of white, libertarian crypto guy down there. Austin had summers too hot and winters too cold (plus demonstrated issues with the electric grid). And both lost points for their political situations.

LA won the tiebreaker over San Diego because I knew people there and there was more of a tech scene. Even if I wanted to continue working remotely, it was starting to feel like a liability that I wasn’t doing much in-person tech networking in Philly. Every city has its own ambition — I thought it would be beneficial to spend more time with ambitious folks in LA. That essentially made the choice LA or nothing — I told my roommates if I didn’t like LA, I’d do another year with the plan to travel for a good chunk of the lease (I miss how cheap Philly rent was to make that an option).

The visit

I didn’t enjoy my first two days in LA. It was late January — cold and windy at night. I really wanted to see if a neighborhood in LA would be a “walkable city” for me. So I walked. A lot. 60 miles in a four-day span. My friends told me I’d break my foot. Jokes on them, I just got tendinitis. Then, a month later I broke my other foot. I really told them, huh.

My methodology was flawed, though. When you’re walking through neighborhoods as a tourist or whatever you’d call me, you’re walking way more than you would on a normal day. I didn’t realize that for many months. I did give up on the idea I could live in LA without a car, whether or not I should have. But once I stopped judging everything through the lens of whether or not I’d need a car, the benefits of LA really started shining.

The way I ended up describing my motivations for moving to LA: it was January, 65 degrees and sunny and I’m walking on the Santa Monica beach path in a tee shirt and shorts. I said to myself, yeah, that’s better.

The decision

I had a good time in LA but I wasn’t sure if I liked it enough to move.

As much as I knew Philly wasn’t an ideal fit for that time in my life, it was still good. I didn’t have to force a move if I didn’t want to.

But it brought forth the comparison to capped and uncapped ranges in poker. It refers to the idea that on some boards, based on the action in the hand so far, some players can have the best hand and others can’t. An example: a player goes all-in preflop and is called by one player. The flop comes out 3, 5, 7 of different suits. The player who went all-in preflop is capped. They’re not going to have 6-4 in their hand for a straight.

Philly was good but was capped. LA was uncertain. I didn’t know. I might love it or hate it.

It largely came down to the quote (to which I’m not sure where to attribute) that when people have a choice between doing a new thing or the same thing, they’re often happier when doing the new thing. Chasing the uncertainty seemed like the right call.

And there were clear benefits of doing that here. I’d get the information of whether LA is a place I’d want to be long-term much faster than if I waited a year. And if it turns out I don’t like LA, I could go to another city in summer 2024.

I told my roommates within a few days of returning. I offered to my roommates that if my replacement in the house wanted to move in early, I’d be happy to get out to LA in the spring, but that did not end up materializing.

The aftermath

Same with how I prioritized information gain with the decision of whether or not to move, I prioritized information gain with how I thought I might like LA 10 years in the future.

To sound super cringy, I wanted to live for a bit in a lifestyle I might aspire to. That way I’d know whether it was worthy of my aspirations, or whether I should aim elsewhere.

I found an open room in a big house in Santa Monica with six other young professionals as roommates. I took it. For a year, I lived a block over from Owen Wilson.

I had debated buying a bike or even trying to run up credit card points on $1,000 of rideshare a month, but I bought a car for max convenience. I drove it almost every day but due to short trips only racked up 2,500 miles in the first 10 months (with my summer 2024 roadtrips I evened it out to about 7,000 miles in the first year).

LA isn’t perfect, and there were a few things I wish I did better after the move. But the things I thought would be quality of life improvements panned out. I don’t love that it still gets cold at winter nights, but the sun is out every day and it’s warm enough on winter days that I can still get outside. I’ve met some great people, reconnected with old friends, and picked up some new hobbies. As a bonus, I was able to walk a lot more than I expected.

Overall, I’ve been happy with the decision and have enjoyed my time here. I moved out of the house in April to get my own place in Santa Monica, and life is good.