I have a lot of jewelry.

This should surprise no one.

I have loved jewelry for as long as I can remember. Earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings. Delicate pieces, statement pieces, vintage looking pieces. The kind of earrings that can completely change your black dress, which is very useful when 90% of your wardrobe is black.

But here’s the funny thing about owning a lot of jewelry:

I still reach for the same pieces over and over.

You probably do too.

There’s a necklace you put on without really thinking about it. The earrings that somehow work with everything. The bracelet you realize you’re still wearing three days later.

And then there are pieces sitting beautifully in a jewelry box waiting for some special occasion worthy of them.

I’ve never been very good at that part.

I like wearing the good jewelry on a Tuesday.

I like statement earrings with jeans.

I like a beautiful necklace with a black T-shirt.

I like being slightly overdressed for dinner.

Actually, it’s fun to be slightly overdressed for almost anything.

I’ve never really understood the idea that beautiful things should be saved for special occasions. Maybe that’s because the older I get, the more I realize how many ordinary days end up becoming the days you remember.

But I also think jewelry is different from almost anything else we wear.

Clothes are practical. Shoes are necessary. A handbag is carrying 17 things I apparently cannot leave the house without.

But jewelry doesn’t really have a job.

We wear it simply because we love it.

And maybe that’s why it becomes so personal.

A necklace can remind you of a trip, a ring can remind you of a person, a pair of earrings can remind you of exactly who you were when you bought them.

Some pieces mark huge moments in our lives. Others don’t mark anything at all. We just put them on one morning and somehow overtime they become ours.

They’re in vacation photos. They’re at birthday parties. They’re worn on a first date. They’re there when we’re drinking Prosecco with our girlfriends, when we’re sitting at a school event and when we’re running out of the house 10 minutes late.

They quietly become part of the way we see ourselves.

And I’ve always loved that about jewelry.

It’s probably also why when I started Arella I wasn’t interested in creating jewelry that felt precious in the don’t touch it kind of way.

I wanted jewelry that was beautiful but wearable.

Pieces that you don’t have to wait for somewhere special to wear.

Pieces that can make the black sweater you’ve won 47 times feel different.

Pieces you pack for a trip because you already know you’re going to wear them.

Pieces that eventually become the ones you reach for without thinking.

Starting a jewelry brand has made me think about this even more.

Because there is a huge difference between something being beautiful and something becoming yours. I can look at hundreds of pieces and think they’re beautiful.

But the ones I really love are the ones I immediately imagine living in.

Where would I wear this? What would I wear it with? Would I put it on for dinner?Can I wear it with jeans? Would I throw it in my suitcase without even thinking about whether it matches what I packed?

And most importantly:

Would I still want to wear it five years from now?

That last question has become increasingly important to me.

Maybe because I’m a little less interested in trends than I used to be.

Maybe because I am trying to buy fewer things that feel exciting for five minutes and more things that actually deserve a place in my life.

Or maybe I’m just old enough now to know the difference between something I admire and something that actually feels like me.

I’m working on a new collection for Arella right now, launching in the fall, and I find myself thinking about the woman I’m designing this for and keep coming back to the same question constantly.

Will she still reach for this five years from now?

Not because jewelry has to be boring to be timeless. I actually think the opposite.

Some of my favorite pieces make a statement.

But there’s a difference between something that gets attention and something that only exists for attention.

I want the first one.

I want jewelry that makes someone ask where you got it, but that you would have worn even if nobody noticed.

Jewelry that feels special without requiring a special occasion.

Jewelry that looks just as good with the black dress at dinner as it does with the white shirt the next morning.

Basically, jewelry that gets worn.

Because as much as I love a beautiful jewelry box, I don’t particularly want my favorite things living inside of one.

I want them at dinner. I want them on vacation. I want them in photographs. I want them with the outfit you’ve already worn a hundred times. I want them on an ordinary Tuesday.

And years from now, I want you to look down and realize you’re still wearing them.

Those are the pieces I never take off.

And those are the kinds of collections I want Arella to be known for.

I’ve always been a pretty easygoing person.

And I don’t mean that in the I’m so chill, I don’t care about anything way.

I care about a lot.

I definitely have opinions. I have preferences. I definitely know which restaurant I would rather go to, what I want to drink when I get there and whether I would prefer the table outside.

But by nature, I’m pretty chill.

Plans change? Fine.

You’re running late? That’s annoying, but I’ll survive.

The restaurant I want to go to doesn’t have a reservation? We’ll go somewhere else.

I don’t need everything to go my way in order to have a good time.

And I’ve always liked that about myself.

But I’ve realized that, particularly in romantic relationships, I’ve taken “easygoing” a little too far.

Because there’s being easygoing, and then there’s being so determined to not be difficult, that you make yourself incredibly easy to disappoint.

I think somewhere along the way I started believing that less friction meant a better relationship.

Don’t ask for too much.

Don’t make everything a thing.

Be understanding.

Give people space.

Pick your battles.

And to be honest, I still believe most of that.

I don’t want to be in a relationship filled with unnecessary conflict. I don’t want to argue for the sake of arguing. I don’t need constant reassurance or someone’s attention every second of the day.

That’s genuinely not who I am.

But I have realized there’s a difference between being low drama and being low needs.

And I’ve confused the two sometimes.

Because being the easygoing one can become its own little trap.

You’re so good at understanding everyone else’s circumstances that you start explaining away your own disappointment.

He’s busy.

It’s not a big deal.

I understand.

I don’t want to put pressure on it.

And sometimes all of those things are true.

But something can be true and still not work for you.

I think that’s one of the biggest lessons I have learned.

Having empathy for someone else’s limitations doesn’t require pretending you don’t have needs of your own.

You can understand why someone can’t give you something and still decide that you need it.

You can be compassionate without constantly being accommodating.

You can be chill and still have standards.

And you can say, Actually this doesn’t work for me, without being the “high maintenance woman”, everyone has apparently spent decades warning us not to become.

Because somewhere along the way, “low maintenance” became one of those compliments that women were supposed to want.

She’s easygoing.

She’s independent.

She’s not needy.

And I understand the appeal, I am sure I have taken pride in being described that way.

I am independent, I am capable, I have my own life. I don’t need someone to entertain me or check in with me every 15 minutes.

But I have realized that independence and having needs are not opposites.

I can take care of myself and still want someone else to make an effort.

I can make my own dinner reservation and still appreciate when someone makes one for me.

I can solve my own problems and still want someone to show up when I have one.

I can enjoy my own life and still expect consistency from someone who wants to be a part of it.

Those things are not mutually exclusive.

And I realize that’s where I’ve gotten it wrong.

Being independent doesn’t mean becoming so self sufficient that nobody ever has to consider you.

I can understand you’re busy.

I can understand that work is stressful.

I can understand that life is complicated.

I am actually very good at understanding.

But at some point, I also have to ask myself:

Does this work for me?

That’s the question I have not always been good at asking.

Not: Can I understand why this person is behaving this way?

I probably can.

Not: Can I tolerate this?

I’m pretty adaptable, I can probably do that too.

But does it actually work for me?

That’s different.

Because you can explain away almost anything if you’re determined enough to see someone else’s perspective.

Empathy is a beautiful quality, until you start using it to talk yourself out of your own feelings.

Maybe that’s what has changed for me.

I don’t want to become less easygoing.

I like being easygoing.

I don’t want to create conflict where there isn’t any. I don’t want to keep score. And I definitely don’t want every minor disappointment to become a three hour relationship summit. That is exhausting.

I just don’t want “easygoing” to be another word for making myself smaller so a relationship has less friction.

Because maybe a little friction isn’t always bad.

Sometimes friction is just two people being honest about what they need and how they feel.

Sometimes saying what you want gives the other person the opportunity to actually show up for you.

Sometimes saying what you need reveals what they can’t give you.

Both things are important to know.

I think I’ve just finally learned there’s a point where easygoing becomes a little too easygoing.

And I don’t want to make myself easier to be with by asking for less than I actually want and need.

Because the goal is not to be the easiest woman in the world to date.

It’s to be exactly who I am: easygoing, independent, opinionated when it matters, and still be honest about what I want and need.

And hopefully find someone who doesn’t require me to need less in order for the relationship to work.

I've worn black for as long as I can remember. 

Not exclusively, I own white, beige, denim, etc. Every once in a while, another color makes its way into my closet. 

But mostly? Black. 

Black dresses. Black sweaters. Black tanks. Black blazers. Black pants. If I'm standing in a store debating between something in black and literally any other color, we all know how this is going to end. 

And for as long as I've been wearing black, people have been telling me I should wear more color.

You always wear black. 

You would look so good in this color. 

You need some color in your closet. 

Why don't you try something different?

I've heard some version of this approximately 10,000 times. 

And here's the thing: I know nobody means anything negative by it. They're probably right, there are plenty of colors that look nice on me. 

I just don't want to wear them. 

And at 45, I think I have finally reached the point where everyone can accept that. 

I love black.

I don't think it's boring. I think it's chic. I think it's classic. I think almost everything looks better in black. I like the way gold jewelry looks against it. I like that I can put on a black sweater, jeans, oversized sunglasses, great earrings and feel completely dressed. 

Most importantly, I feel like myself in it. 

It took me a long time to realize that last part is reason enough. 

Because I did try. 

Over the years, I've bought plenty of things because someone told me I needed more color. I've bought the colorful dress, I've tried the print, I've stood in dressing rooms wearing something that looked absolutely nothing like me while someone assured me, this looks so good on you.

And maybe it did. But you know where most of those things ended up? 

Hanging in my closet while I reached for the black dress again.

When I was younger, I think I had this idea that having great personal style meant constantly experimenting. Trying the trend, buying what everyone else was wearing and being open to becoming some slightly different version of myself every season.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to dress like the woman I could be and started getting much more comfortable dressing like the woman I actually am. 

And I think that's one of my favorite things about getting older.

At 25, I thought personal style meant being willing to try everything. 

At 45, I think it means finally knowing what you can stop trying.

I am never going to become a woman who loves bright prints. 

I'm okay with that.

I don't need six versions of whatever Instagram has decided we are all supposed to be wearing this summer. I don't need to buy something just because it's a flattering color. And I definitely don't need to convince myself I'll eventually wear that colorful dress when I know exactly what's going to happen. 

I'm going to wear the black one.

Strangely, the less I've tried to be fashionable, the more I feel like I've actually developed a style. 

Because I've realized fashion and personal style are not the same thing. 

Fashion changes constantly, personal style is what you keep coming back to.

For me, that's black, cream and white. Great denim, a good blazer, oversized sunglasses. Simple pieces I can wear 100 different ways.

And always jewelry. 

Actually, I think my love of a simple wardobe is probably part of the reason I've always loved jewelry so much.

When you're wearing a black sweater and jeans, the details become the outfit. 

A great pair of earrings, the necklace you never take off, a stack of bracelets. The bag. The sunglasses. The shoes.

Give me a black dress and gold jewelry over a complicated outfit any day. 

Those little things are what makes something feel like mine.

And maybe that's also why the older I get, the less interested I am in having a lot of things and the more interested I am in having the right things.

I want the blazer I reach for constantly. The jeans I already know look good. 

The black dress that works for dinner in LA, gets thrown in my suitcase for New York and somehow ends up coming on vacation too. 

I don't want an overflowing closet full of possibilities. I want to open my closet and recognize myself.

Maybe that's what personal style actually is.

Not figuring out how to dress like the woman you think you're supposed to be. 

Not constantly reinventing yourself. 

Not wearing color because someone, somewhere, has decided you need more of it in your life.

Maybe it's just paying enough attention to notice what you've loved all along and finally giving yourself permission to stop explaining it.

So yes, I probably should wear more color.

I'm still going to wear black.

One thing my friends and family always notice about me is that when I go somewhere, I like to stay a while.

Whether it’s dinner with friends in L.A., a little café in Europe or a coffee shop I’ve been wanting to try for months, I like to linger. I’ll order another Prosecco, we’ll keep talking and people watch. Sometimes we will sit long after we’ve finished eating simply because the evening feels too good to end. I’ve noticed something else over the years. A lot of people don’t do that anymore. They sit down, scan the menu, order, eat and when the check comes someone asks “Ready to go?”

And just like that...It’s over.

I’ve never really understood the hurry. One of my favorite parts of going out has never been the meal itself. It’s everything else that happens around it. The conversation that wanders somewhere unexpected. Watching people pass by. Ordering another drink because nobody has anywhere they absolutely need to be. Simply enjoying where you already are.

My kids have grown up with that. Some of my friends are amazed that they can sit at a restaurant for hours without complaining. They don’t ask when we’re leaving, they don’t get restless, or say they are bored. To them, that’s just what going out looks like. Because that’s what they have always known. I think that’s because they have always understood something I’ve tried to teach them without ever really having to repeat it out loud.

Not every moment is about you.

If we’re spending four hours at a playground, that’s your afternoon. I’ll happily sit on a bench listening to screaming children because those moments are about you. But if we’re sitting in a beautiful restaurant overlooking the ocean, tucked into a little café in Europe, or somewhere we’ve never been before then this moment isn’t about rushing through dinner so we can get to the next thing. It’s about learning how to be exactly where we are. Looking around, watching people walk by, talking a little longer. Ordering another Prosecco. Letting an ordinary moment become the memory.

I think that’s one of the greatest gifts we can give our children.

To teach them that life isn’t always something to move through as quickly as possible. Sometimes it’s something to sit with. Some of my favorite memories aren’t birthdays or holidays. They’re random evenings that lasted longer than expected. The dinner where nobody wanted to ask for the check, the café we stumbled into because it looked charming, the conversation that somehow turned into three hours. Nothing extraordinary happened and somehow those are the moments I remember most.

Maybe that’s because the best parts of life rarely announce themselves while they’re happening. They’re usually disguised as an ordinary Tuesday. A dinner that runs long. A second bottle of Prosecco and chisme. A walk with nowhere in particular to be. I know we’re all busy, I know responsibilities don’t disappear. I’m not suggesting we all have endless evenings every day. But I do wonder what would happen if, every once in a while, we stopped treating life like something we needed to hurry through. If we stayed just a little longer, walked one more block, put our phones away. Let the conversation finish instead of checking the time. Because one day, I don’t think we’ll remember the emails we answered. We’ll remember the dinners where nobody wanted to ask for the check. The conversations that wandered as much as we did. The evenings where nobody was in a hurry to leave.

So if the conversation is good...

Stay a little longer. Order dessert. Open the second bottle of Prosecco.

Life has a funny way of happening while we’re rushing off to whatever comes next.

Lately...I’ve been trying not to miss it.

If you had asked me at twenty-five what I thought forty-five looked like, I probably would’ve painted a pretty traditional picture.

Married, settled down, living in the house I would stay in forever, my career figured out. Everything neat and predictable. It’s funny how confidently we imagine a future we’ve never actually lived. Because if you asked me today whether my life turned out the way I thought it would... I’d have to say no. Not even close. And strangely enough... I’m finally okay with that.

I think we’ve romanticized our twenties. We’re told they’re supposed to be the best years of our lives. The years we’re young enough to stay out until two in the morning and somehow still function the next day. The years we’re discovering ourselves.

Falling in love. Building careers. Traveling the world. Living without responsibilities.

Maybe that’s true for some people. It wasn’t really true for me. I became a mom at twenty. So while my friends were deciding where they wanted to move or what they wanted to do after college, I was figuring out daycare schedules, college classes, and how to raise my daughter. Don’t get me wrong, there was so much joy in those years. I still traveled, still went out with my girlfriends, still laughed until I cried. And I truly loved being a mom.

However, responsibility arrived early in my life. Once it does, it has a way of becoming part of who you are. I have been a mom my entire adult life. I don’t say that with regret. If anything, I think becoming a mom so young shaped me into the person I am today. It made me resilient. It made me intentional. It taught me how to think beyond myself.

But I also think it meant I spent a lot of my twenties and thirties doing what so many women do. Taking care of everyone else. Checking the boxes, getting through the week. Believing that eventually life would slow down and I would finally have time to figure out what Brandi wanted.

Then one day I realized something. Nobody was going to hand me permission.

Not to move across the country.

Not to start a business.

Not to take the trip.

Not to build a life that actually felt like mine.

That part was up to me.

Moving to Los Angeles wasn’t a spontaneous decision. I had dreamed about living here since I was a little girl. When I finally packed up my life and made the move, I thought I was fulfilling a childhood dream. I had no idea it would also change the way I looked at my everyday life.

I wanted to become the version of myself I had spent years putting on hold. The woman who doesn’t rush through lunch anymore. The one who lingers a little longer, people watches, orders another Prosecco if she feels like it and isn’t always in a hurry to get to the next thing. The woman who explores a new neighborhood just because she’s never been there before. The woman who buys flowers for herself just because they’re beautiful. The woman who starts over again and again because the dream still matters.

If you had told twenty-five-year-old me that’s what my forties would look like, I’m not sure she would’ve believed you. She probably would’ve thought something had gone wrong. Now I think something went right.

I know getting older has a bad reputation, especially for women. We’re constantly reminded of everything we’re supposedly losing:

Youth.

Time.

Beauty.

Options.

But nobody talks enough about everything we gain:

Confidence.

Perspective.

Boundaries.

Peace.

The ability to stop caring quite so much about whether everyone likes us. The freedom to realize we don’t have to live according to someone else’s timeline. At twenty-five, I thought life was about having everything figured out. At forty-five, I know it’s about asking better questions.

What makes me happy?

What kind of life do I actually want?

Who do I want to spend time with?

What memories am I creating?

What ordinary Tuesday will I miss one day?

If someone offered me twenty-five again… I would politely decline.

I’ll keep forty-five.

So often, we believe beautiful things deserve a special occasion.

The nice dress is for a wedding, the expensive candle is for company, the good perfume is for date night. The jewelry is for vacations or birthdays or some event important enough to justify wearing it.

The funny thing about “special occasions” is that they have a way of moving.

Once the wedding is over, you wait for the next one. Once the vacation ends, you save everything again. Once the birthday passes, the jewelry goes back in the box. Before you know it, you’ve spent years protecting beautiful things instead of enjoying them.

I don’t think we’re the only generation that does this. Maybe it comes from watching our parents save the good china. Or the fancy towels no one was allowed to use. Or the living room that somehow stayed too nice to actually live in. Somewhere along the way, we learned that beautiful things needed protecting.

I’ve started to think the opposite. Beautiful things were made to be part of our everyday lives.

Wear the necklace to lunch, light the expensive candle on a Tuesday, buy the flowers because the grocery store happened to have peonies. Open the second bottle of Prosesso.

Not because something extraordinary happened. Because today happened. Owning a jewelry brand has only reinforced that belief. People sometimes ask me when they should wear a particular necklace. My answer is almost always...Today.

Wear it to work.

Wear it to the farmers market.

Wear it with a white T-shirt and jeans.

Wear it to dinner with your girlfriends.

Wear it because beautiful things were never meant to wait in a jewelry box

The pieces I love most aren’t the ones that only come out twice a year. They’re the ones that quietly become part of my life. The necklace I reach for without thinking. The earrings that somehow end up in every vacation photo. The bracelet that’s been with me through first dates, airport security lines, coffee meetings and long lunches.

That’s when jewelry becomes more than an accessory. It becomes part of your story.

The older I get, the less interested I am in waiting for life to become special. I would rather make ordinary days feel a little more beautiful. Maybe that’s what growing up has really taught me. Not that special occasions don’t matter. They absolutely do. But ordinary Tuesdays deserve beautiful things too.

So wear the dress, wear the good jewelry, order another Prosecco. Stay a little longer.

Life isn’t waiting for the special occasion.

It’s happening while we’re deciding whether today is worthy enough.

I think it is.

When we first moved to L.A. the kids and I were so excited to explore all of it. One weekend we would drive to Malibu because it felt like a beach day. Another weekend we would end up in West Hollywood trying a restaurant I had saved on Instagram for months. We would spend an afternoon wandering around Beverly Hills, stop for coffee somewhere new or take a day trip to Santa Barbara just because we could.

One of my favorite things about Los Angeles is that every neighborhood feels like its own little city. They all have their own personality, their own coffee shops, their own restaurants and their own vibe.

We would find a restaurant with a patio, order lunch or dinner and just hang. We would people watch, talk about nothing important, order dessert if we felt like it and walk around afterward with nowhere we had to be. Looking back, I think those moments were less about the locations and more about finally giving myself permission to slow down. I remember sitting there one afternoon, watching people walk by and thinking:

This is it. This is the life I’ve been waiting for.

The funny thing is, nothing extraordinary was happening. We weren’t on vacation. We weren’t celebrating anything. It was just lunch. But somewhere between the conversation, the sunshine and having absolutely nowhere to rush off to, something clicked. For years, I imagined that one day my life would finally begin. I never actually said those words out loud, but that’s how I was living.

I was always looking toward the next chapter, the next relationship, the next vacation or the next milestone. Not because I wasn’t grateful for the life I had, I was. But I think somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that happiness was always waiting just a little further ahead.

Looking back, it makes sense.

I became a mom at twenty, so my version of adulthood looked different than a lot of my friends. While everyone else was figuring out careers, apartments and what they wanted their twenties to look like, I was figuring out daycare schedules, college classes, and how to raise a tiny human. I still had fun, I still traveled, I still went out with my girlfriends. But there was always someone depending on me. Responsibility wasn’t something I turned on and off. It just became part of who I was.

Then life kept happening, as it always does.

Some things worked out exactly the way I imagined and others didn’t.

Some chapters I never saw coming.

Through all of it, though, I’ve always been optimistic. I’ve always believed that if one dream didn’t work out, another one was waiting for me. If one chapter ended, there was another one I hadn’t met yet. Maybe that’s naïve but I like to think it’s hopeful. But hope and presence aren’t the same thing. You can spend years believing your best days are ahead of you without realizing you’re missing the ones you’re living right now.

That’s what Los Angeles gave me.

Not just better weather or prettier sunsets. Perspective.

For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t living for the next thing. I wasn’t constantly thinking about where I needed to be or what I needed to accomplish. I started paying attention to where I already was. Lunch with my kids, an afternoon at the beach, coffee outside instead of grabbing it to go. Walking through a neighborhood just because it was beautiful. Buying fresh flowers because they made an ordinary Tuesday feel a little brighter. It wasn’t about spending money or creating a picture-perfect life. It was about realizing that ordinary days deserve our attention too.

For so long, I treated life like something that would begin once everything finally fell into place. Once I had more time, more money, more certainty. Once life looked the way I thought it was supposed to. But life has taught me something different. Tomorrow isn’t promised, I’ve known that for a long time. Not in a dramatic way, just in a very real one. When you’ve experienced that, your priorities change.

You stop saving the good bottle of wine.

You stop waiting to wear the dress.

You buy the flowers.

You take the trip.

You say yes to lunch and stay a little longer.

Because one day, you’ll look back at what felt like an ordinary afternoon and realize that it wasn’t ordinary at all… It was your life.

And maybe that’s the biggest gift Los Angeles has given me.

The life I kept waiting for wasn’t waiting on the other side of the next milestone.

It was already happening.

If you read my last post, you know I've been obsessed with LA since childhood and finally moved here at 39 after a very long detour called life. And I mean that literally; my 20s and 30s were a lot. Loss, a marriage that didn't work out, grief, survival mode. The kind of years that keep you busy in ways that have nothing to do with actually living. I'll get into all of that another time. But for now just know: when I say moving here was meaningful, I mean it in a way that goes a little deeper than palm trees and good weather.

What I want to talk about today is what actually happened to me once I got here. Like, to my personality. My nervous system. All of it.

Because something shifts when you live here. And as a New Yorker, it was a lot to process.

In New York, the energy is the point. The hustle, the grind, the moving fast and doing more and being somewhere better in twenty minutes. I will always love that about New York- it's in my DNA, it doesn't leave you. But LA quietly, slowly, without asking permission, did something I did not see coming: it made me actually enjoy my life while I was living it.

I know. Groundbreaking.

Here it is completely normal, expected actually. Normal to spend a Saturday trying a new coffee shop just because someone said the lattes were good. To drive around a neighborhood you've never explored, find a cute street, wander into a restaurant for lunch with zero plan. To be outside in January because it's 72 degrees and perfect and there is genuinely no reason to be inside. That's just a regular weekend. And I say this as someone who spent decades moving so fast through life that I was barely experiencing any of it; just getting through things to get to the next thing.

LA taught me to romanticize the day-to-day. Not in a cheesy manifestation-journal way. In a your life is actually happening right now and you might want to pay attention way. Big difference.

Okay. Now we need to talk about the flaky thing. Someone did warn me and I still wasn't prepared.

The day the kids and I landed in LA (we moved here with six suitcases and a shipped car, which is either very brave or completely insane, I'll let you decide) we were getting off the airport shuttle at the rental car center, luggage absolutely everywhere, when the driver looked at us and said "wow, long trip planned?" I told him we'd just moved from New York. He goes "no way, I'm from Brooklyn, made the move a few years ago." And then he looked me dead in the eye and said: “one word of advice, people are flaky here. They'll make plans and never follow through. As a New Yorker that's going to feel weird. You'll get used to it.” Then he laughed, wished us luck, and drove away.

I thought about that exchange a lot over the next few months. Because very quickly, I felt it.

Someone I'd just met said "we should get coffee sometime!" with so much genuine warmth and enthusiasm that I went home thinking I had made a new friend. I was excited. I was already thinking about which coffee shop. I never heard from that person again. And this was not an isolated incident.

As a New Yorker I was baffled. Initially offended, if we're being honest. Because in New York, your word means something. If you say you want to get coffee, you want to get coffee. And if you don't want to see someone again? You're just going to be mysteriously busy. Indefinitely. It's a cleaner system and more honest, arguably.

But here's what almost seven years has taught me: the LA coffee invite is not a lie, it's just a different language. It's not "let's make plans." It's "I like your energy and I'm putting that out into the universe." It means they genuinely enjoyed meeting you in that moment. It does not mean they're going to text you. Those are two completely separate things here and once you accept that, everything makes so much more sense.

Do I fully get it even now? Not entirely. But I've stopped taking it personally.

Seven years in and I am simultaneously still a New Yorker to my core and also absolutely the person who will cancel plans because it's 75 degrees in February and I refuse to waste that. LA did that to me. I have zero regrets.

Every time I go back to New York, someone asks me the same thing. Is LA worth the hype? And every single time, without hesitation, without even blinking: YES. Always yes. Next question.

But here’s the thing, I was obsessed with this city long before I ever landed here. I grew up in love with pop culture, with Hollywood, with the whole mythology of it. I was a kid watching movies and TV thinking, okay, that place is real and I need to be there. Somewhere in my little brain I just decided: Los Angeles was going to be mine someday.

I would read magazine articles or biographies of my favorite actors and the one thing they all had in common? They moved to LA. And their dreams came true.

I didn’t actually visit until I was 18. And the second I got off that plane, I’m not being dramatic, I just knew. This was going to be my home someday. It wasn’t even a thought, it was more like a fact I hadn’t been told yet.

And then life happened. As it does. I visited a lot over the years, enough that LA started to feel familiar, like a place that was just waiting for me to catch up to it. I finally moved here at 39. Which sounds insane when I say it out loud, but also worth every single year of waiting. Maybe even more meaningful because of them.

Almost seven years later, I am still not over it. Not even slightly.

There is a feeling you get in this city that is genuinely hard to explain to someone who hasn’t felt it. Old Hollywood glamour meets actual serenity. A cultural melting pot where everyone has a completely different story but somehow the energy is identical. That feeling that anything is possible, and I don’t just mean in Beverly Hills or up in the Hills. I mean everywhere. You feel it on a random street in Los Feliz. You feel it at the beach. You feel it people-watching at a coffee shop while tourists wander by with their cameras out, completely losing their minds over the fact that this place actually exists and looks like this.

Which, same. Honestly, same.

There’s a reason people come here and never leave. The city has always had that pull.. this magnetic, slightly irrational, totally justified allure. Beverly Hills, the beaches, the light at 6pm that makes everything look like a movie. It’s a lot. It’s also exactly as good as advertised.

Is it perfect? No. Does it have challenges? Sure. Is it still completely, unapologetically fabulous? Absolutely.

Next time I’ll get into what LA actually did to me; to my New Yorker nervous system, to my whole personality, honestly. But for now: if you’ve never been, go. And if you have? You already know exactly what I’m talking about.