When I first moved to Washington, D.C., it was because I thought that I had found the place where my dream life would unfold. It had the youth, the striving — all those polished young professionals who looked purposeful even when they were fetching coffee. It seemed like a place where things were happening, careers ignited and where the kind of me I wanted to be actually made sense. And I thought for a time, down there in those woods and hills, that I was exactly where I belonged.
But the more I stayed, the more I learned that liking a city on paper and liking it in person are two completely different things. D.C. had its thrills, but it was draining. The speed never let up, the endless connection-making felt like networking even when it wasn’t and the rhythm of the city seemed to require a certain kind of constant output that by the end was starting to exhaust me. I would pass blocks of impeccably restored brownstones and wonder why I didn’t feel at home. I would meet amazing people and always have an odd feeling like, I don’t know anyone. It wasn’t that anything was wrong with the city — it just wasn’t right for me.”
There were times I attempted to push it through. I worked myself to exhaustion, like most of us seemed to do. I attended the brunches and the rooftop gatherings and the after-hours things that you swear are the pulse of D.C. culture. I kept expecting the city to click, for one day I would get up and fall in love with it by default. But I left each try feeling a bit more sapped, a bit more twitchy and a lot more conscious that something wasn’t there.
What it took to finally jolt me out of this approach was how I realized my life had become about stress, instead of opportunity. I was over striving for the next title, the next resume builder, the next accolade everyone else seemed to value. I wanted space. I wanted air. I wanted a life that felt like mine — not a performance of someone else’s vision of success.
That’s when San Diego came into the equation.
I felt like I was being transported into another world the first time I visited. The sunlight was softer. People smiled more. They weren’t conversations about policy deadlines or professional wins — they were about weekend plans, beaches, dogs and the level of everyday joy I hadn’t understood I’d been missing. I remember sitting on the edge of a cliff in La Jolla looking out at the water and feeling, almost involuntarily: “This is what breathing feels like.”
It was hard to miss, and it didn’t take me long to realize San Diego wasn’t just lovely scenery — it was the way of living I’d been craving without knowing how to describe it. The slower pace allowed me to be a person, not just a résumé. The outdoor culture got me out of my apartment and into the world in a way that DC never did. I began walking on the beach in the morning before work, and for the first time in years, I didn’t feel weighed down by my day before it even got started.
I discovered people who cherished happiness, not burnout. Friends who were not keeping score based on how many hours they logged at the office. A neighborhood where achievement didn’t entail cutting off your nose to spite your happiness. I found that every time I went outside, instead of being on edge, I was calm. There was space to breathe, to think, to just be. It may sound small, but when you’ve been struggling on the edge for years, it’s everything.
The surprising part? How quickly I felt at home in San Diego. It wasn’t immediate — no place ever is — but the change was unmistakable. It was the first time I actually lived and not functioned. I was outside more than in. I also reaquaintanced myself with a hobby of mine that I had forgotten. Though my mealtimes and walking routes were never the same from day to day, for the first time perhaps ever, I didn’t need to “get away” for those weekends because finally it felt as though I wasn’t needing a break from ‘normal’.
Leaving DC wasn’t a failure. It was clarity. What it did was teach me that the city you aspire to live in and the city that really supports and sustains who you are can be two different places. And sometimes, the most courageous act is realizing what you don’t want after all.
San Diego handed me a gift I never uncovered in D.C.: the room to construct my own life, not one that seemed impressive from the outside looking in. And once I got that, I knew that was it, I wasn’t going back.
