30 Days Out: Part III

Part III, California back to Florida

Okay welcome back. When we left off, I had just loaded up my car, my dog, and everything I owned, and pointed it straight at California. No plan, no people, just a feeling.

So now you get the part everyone always asks me about. How did I even find somewhere to live across the country sight unseen?

Honestly? Facebook Marketplace. That's it. That's the answer.

I found a room for rent in an apartment in Burbank that had a little loft, messaged a complete stranger, and said cool, I'll take it. This could have gone so, so wrong. By the grace of God it went right.

Getting there was its own adventure.

I drove across the country and made it through a full on Texas blizzard that I'm pretty sure almost killed me. But I made it.

And then there I was. Sitting in my new bedroom, which was a loft with no actual walls, in the middle of California, living with a girl I had never met, knowing not a single soul. Somehow I was completely terrified and completely excited at the same exact time.

Oh, and did I mention this was still pandemic times? So everything was pretty much shut down and boring at first. Great timing on my part, truly.

The job I actually loved (and the commute I did not).

I ended up working in the office at a steel manufacturing company that made ballistic doors and windows, and I genuinely loved it. I lived in Burbank and commuted to Whittier, which was 28ish miles one way. My hours were early, like 6am to 2pm, and that drive could take 45 minutes in the morning or a casual two hours in the afternoon. Los Angeles traffic is not a joke.

But it didn't take long to figure out that Cali is expensive. Like, really expensive. I quickly realized one job wasn't going to cut it if I wanted to actually make ends meet.

So I found a CrossFit gym that needed a front desk girl, and that became me. That job added so much to my life. But it also added so much stress.

Let me paint you a picture of my daily life out there.

Wake up at 3:30 to 4am. Commute to the gym in Whittier. Work out from 5 to 6. Work my real job from 6 to 2. Commute home, change clothes, grab my dog, and head straight to the CrossFit gym to work the desk from 4 to 8.

I did that almost every single day for a year.

I eventually moved out of the place with my roommate and into a studio apartment in Van Nuys that was roughly the size of a shoebox. I could sit on the edge of my bed and cook on the stove at the same time, I'm not kidding. And if you know Van Nuys, you know exactly how questionable that move was on my part. My friend and I may or may not have watched a guy get jumped one time. We kept running. Anyway. Moving on.

Here's the thing though. I wouldn't trade any of it.

That season in California was genuinely some of the best time of my life. I made friends and connections out there that I still hold so close. Two of my bridesmaids are Cali girls. Every time I go back I've got a whole list of people to see and stops to make.

I loved it there. I really did.

But love and "this is sustainable" are two different things, and deep down I knew it.

Working that hard to save absolutely nothing.

That's what it came down to. I was grinding myself into the ground from before sunrise to past dinner, every day, just to keep up with how expensive life was. And at the end of it all, I was saving nothing.

I started to see it clearly. If I actually wanted to build a life and a future for myself, I had to get out of California. The only question was how.

And this is the part that still gets me.

I'd gotten close with a girl at the CrossFit gym who worked from home for a pharma company. We were talking one day and I told her the truth, that I felt this pull to get back to the East Coast but had no idea how to make it happen without a job lined up. And she just goes, "we're actually hiring a remote worker."

I had done research back in college and had some project management experience, so she told me to apply. I did. I got it.

Looking back, the entire way out showed up through one random friendship at a gym front desk. I've stopped believing things like that are just a coincidence.

So I started plotting my way home.

Now here's a detail I left out. This whole time I'd owned a little travel trailer RV that was just sitting at my parents' place back in Georgia.

I knew I wanted to be back on the east coast. I also knew I did not want to go back to Georgia. I'd already lived in Florida. I had friends there, connections there, a little bit of a foundation already waiting for me.

So I called up my parents and told them to move the RV down to Florida.

I was coming home.

And what I came home to is where everything I'd been quietly working toward for years finally started to become real. But that's Part IV. The launch. The finale.

See you next Wednesday. 🤍

Just finding the series? Part I and Part II are up on the blog. New part every Wednesday until I go full time. Follow me on IG for new blog drops: @embrazfit