Lean on me

Moving the other side of the world without a job and limited savings pool means one has to get savvy smart.

It also means I’ve had to drop my guard and lean on others – the most interesting observation I’ve made of myself since being in LA.

It's a tough city and not everyone is dependable, certainly not everyone follows through on what they say they will. 

LA geographically is an urban sprawl and without a car almost impossible to get around. So this was the first step – hire a car. But of course, renting anything doesn’t come cheap thus my second step: buy a car.

This is where my roommate, Rane, lent a hand.  She introduced me to her neighbour who trades cars.  Now Darrell is on the search for me but we’re still looking and I’m still paying a hefty car rental.

Rane has lived in LA for a number of years and rents two places – one in West Hollywood (WeHo) and the other in the upmarket beach precinct Marina Del Rey (next to Venice). We met through airbnb.

She and I share similar values and the match is working well.  Rane lived in Rishikesh for 18mths on an ashram – so we also have the ‘India’ connection. 

Part of my India adventure was to strip it back.  I wanted to shed the skin of my comfortable middle class existence and go back to basics.  India indeed achieved this.  It felt like I was the 21 year old European backpacker again – but even edgier – backpacking with streets full of cow shit!

On arrival in LA I was adequately indifferent to life’s luxuries that I could comfortably do dorm mates again.  Rane and I share the same room in her Marina Del Rey studio apartment – an unthinkable proposition to me before my Indian travels.

But when one’s been through that country and seen how ‘the other half lives’ as well with no real projection as to when my PR career will take off here – it’s amazing how little things like one’s own room and personal space become value-add over necessity.

It’s the rude awakening that I can’t be as independent as I was in Oz nor would like to be.  

Unlike my modus operandi of happily functioning solo - I need people.  And revealing your vulnerability is a tricky position to be in anywhere let alone a city as cut throat as LA.

It’s a difficult transition and an eye-opening life turn but another reason I chose to roll this dice and jump out from the comfort zone.