I moved to LA and looked into a mirror

The town is totally bonkers. So much traffic that makes your brain melt in the Californian sun. So much irritation, coming from cars, from pollution, from aggressive men shouting at each other on Sunset Boulevard, occasionally seeming like it could turn into a potential crime scene. So many girls in very tight dresses posing in front of neon lights at West Hollywood bars, endlessly chatting about Instagram accounts and failed Bumble dates, somewhere between cute cluelessness and determined ambition to climb the social ladder. The high pitched voices, “oh my gaaaaahd”. Occasional nonsense. 

It’s very, very easy to complain about Los Angeles. Moving here is not easy and whoever claims otherwise is a liar. 

The acclimatization process usually follows a pattern. At first you get overwhelmed by masses of good looking people. After a while you notice the superficiality and vanity you seem to find on every corner, and the lack of rationalism. Looking at you, stylish crystal huggers! Then you get bewildered by the eternal cheerfulness and unbreakable optimism. Occasional questions on dates, such as: “Hey girl, you wanna see my new car?” might throw you off, too. At some point you start to crave for a more nuanced and deeper conversation. Then you begin to miss a regular commute, outside of your car, that includes taking the public transport and interacting with people. I recently started taking the bus to have more interaction with people to only find out that I share a commute route with mostly homeless people.

It takes a while to figure Los Angeles out. I spent months chasing the wrong things and feeling lost in this jungle, almost like an alien or like an uncool outsider. Everywhere I went – I felt like I didn’t really fit in. While in San Francisco it’s easy to blend in, it is suddenly very hard in Los Angeles: you can’t just show up at parties, drop a few tech company names, tell about your latest Burning Man experience, and everyone would just optimistically nod and make you feel accepted into their tribe. Most people in Los Angeles don’t care about funding rounds, IPOs, and what you did in Silicon Valley. My American quest for acceptance suddenly hit an impasse. I had to recalibrate.

And then it hit me. Los Angeles makes you do the hard work. The town makes you feel deeply insecure and lost among crowds of tanned, pretty and well-dressed people; to only make you collect yourself and come out stronger out of this disorientation. It strips away all your protective layers, such as your professional identity and collective affiliation, to just build you up from the ground up again. It asks you what values you hold outside of your career because people here actually don’t spend too much time talking about careers. It asks about the type of relationships you want to pursue, if you miss your family and where you find inspiration.

The town basically holds up a mirror to you and asks what kind of person you really want to be in this world. Do you really want to chase money, hot dates, eternal youth, and a successful career? Or do you finally start accepting yourself as the odd, lovable and complex person you are and stop pretending to be someone you are not?

It almost seems like you have to learn how to be vulnerable and show your real self to be truly happy in Los Angeles, otherwise the town will just eat you like a snack. 

An American acquaintance recently noted over happy hour drinks that I am “very serious and very German”. I think that’s when I had my Los-Angeles-is-teaching-me-something-moment: My first, admittingly foolish, reaction was to proclaim that I can be impulsive and get into trouble too! If being German meant “too focused & slightly boring” to this person then I wanted to be the opposite.

I suddenly stared at my own reflection in the mirror and thought: This German-ness and seriousness has brought me very far in life, further than most people are willing to go. So why not celebrate that? I defeated immigration laws several times over the last 6 years: Once, when Trump became president, I had to find a new job within a few months that required a much higher salary and skill set. I kept my head down and acquired these skills and ultimately got a better job in a time when many highly skilled foreigners are still being sent back home due to scrutinized immigration policies. Several immigration challenges followed after that but I was always able to prove that hard work and willingness to take risks will reward you, even if that means that you have to learn how to embrace uncertainty and be ready to pack your bags at any time, letting go of any stability and comfort zone. If that is the essence of me – a serious woman who has climbed mountains on her terms and felt pain and fear – then I am proud to be this woman.  

Sometimes I think that everyone should live in a place like Los Angeles once. A town like this teaches you how to connect through honesty and vulnerability because, well, the world is truly a messed up place and if you want to succeed and be happy in this world you got to have an open heart and be true to yourself. It almost seems rebellious nowadays to slow down for a second, take a deep breath under a lemon tree, greet your neighbors, and most importantly: love yourself, the little genuine weirdo.