2022: thank u, next.
Tbh I wrote this entire blog post on my Notes app on my iPhone and it’s just been sitting here for a few months because I thought about publishing it, then thought that I don’t need to publish all my feelings on the internet. Then I thought about how many other people must have those same thoughts so then nobody is sharing or reading or talking about the low parts of life. And there are a lot, especially in your twenties.
Thankfully, my friend Katherine has a podcast called Soul Chats and she has been hosting in-person events where we chat about real life. Our most recent chat was last week and we talked about connection and loneliness. It got me thinking, so here are some thoughts on that below.
What is a flop era?
I’m sure the term originated on TikTok or something but I’m not on TikTok so if there’s someone to credit, LMK. To me, a flop era is a time when your life is just not going your way. And my flop era was not actually during the pandemic, but instead was the majority of the year when I got back to LA. And yes I know overall, I don’t have a lot to complain about. In hindsight, it doesn’t even seem that bad, but in the moment, my flop era was feeling pretty dang floppy.
I saw this graph with phases of life on a survey I was taking on Survey Junkie (because who hasn’t thought about taking surveys to make some extra cash? It wasn’t worth the time in my opinion). I was around a 7 or 8 in March 2020 before COVID. Coming back to LA in January 2022 I was definitely at a 4.
After spending two years back in Bellevue with my parents for the pandemic, I was all set to go back to LA in January 2022. I had found an apartment, my movers were scheduled to deliver my belongings from a storage unit, and I scheduled time off from work so that my mom and I could drive back down to California.
A few weeks before moving, I was standing in the middle of the kitchen sobbing into my dad’s chest. I was 24 years old and after two years of living with my parents, I absolutely did not want to leave Washington. Me. The girl who at 17 only wanted to go to out-of-state universities. The girl who went to the study abroad office on the first day of freshman year because California wasn’t enough of an adventure. The girl who called home maybe once a month throughout the four years of college.
My parents let me cry and said it would be good for me to move back to LA and that I could always come home if I didn’t like it. Pre-pandemic, in my head, I had always felt like moving back home to WA would mean I had failed or something. I don’t know, it sounds silly now, but I think that’s how a lot of people from out of state feel. Like moving to LA is such an accomplishment and you have to stay to prove something. What are we proving? That we can rationalize the cost of living and the traffic and the consumerism? I could go on, but my point is that before the world shut down, I didn’t really see going back home as an option. But now it was the only thing I wanted.
On January 9, 2022 I had a panic attack. My stomach was unwell at the Hugo’s in West Hollywood, my last dinner with my parents before they left me to live in my new apartment in West Hollywood with the strangers I found on Facebook (which is how I had found my previous roommates in LA and it had worked out wonderfully). I was driving my parents back to their hotel and I was hyperventilating and feeling like I was going to throw up. If you saw me on Melrose Blvd with my head out the window like a dog trying to gulp down air, trying not to throw up, yeah that was me.
So I think my parents were concerned for my mental state and honestly, so was I. I cried when I said goodbye to them and cried some more that first week in West Hollywood. I did not want to be in LA at all.
The pandemic wreaked havoc on my nervous system and gave me anxiety like I had never known before. I thought coming out of the pandemic would be easy. My life had been peaking in 2020 right before the world shut down and I was truly loving living in LA. But coming back to the city this time was hard.
I was in a new apartment in a new neighborhood with new people where I had to be an adult after having everything taken care of at my parents’ house. All my friends had scattered around LA and the country. I wanted to be friends with my roommates but honestly, my social skills were very rusty and we just had very different hobbies, schedules, and lifestyles. I spent a lot of time alone, which is fine.
I originally moved to LA the summer after my junior year in 2018, a year before all of my friends. Being 40 miles away from Chapman meant I did a lot of things alone that first year and I have no problem going to the movies alone or going to the beach alone. As an extrovert, I just prefer not to.
It just felt sucky to have to experience that all over again 4 years later. There were so many nights where I wanted to just go grab ice cream with someone, and somehow in a city of literally a million people, there just wasn’t anyone to text last-minute on a Friday night, so I stayed home. But sometimes I did go by myself, and it was fine, but I would’ve just preferred to have gone with someone.
But even as I started to reconnect with people in 2022, I realized it was different. I had changed in the past two years, and I realized everyone else had too. I missed out on a lot of moments while I was back in WA and naturally didn’t feel as close to my friends. I had new interests. They had new interests. And we each had little interest in sharing those interests. And that’s okay.
So I focused a lot on myself. I was extremely busy with work for the first half of the year and was consistently working late nights and weekends until mid-May. In my spare time, I watched TV alone in my room and read a lot of books. I woke up at 6am to train for my half marathon. I made new friends with my co-workers and tried over 100 new restaurants. But LA life just didn’t feel as sparkly. I wasn’t exploring the way I had before. I wasn’t excited about life in general the way I had been before. I was barely taking photos and I was hardly blogging because what do you blog about when you aren’t doing anything?
Journal excerpt from April 4, 2022
I am worried that I am unwell…I just feel sad. I don’t like it in West Hollywood. The highs are high but my god the lows are low. I feel like living here gives me anxiety. I wasn’t sure about it [moving to West Hollywood] at first and I probably should’ve just stayed home. They aren’t really making us go into the office. My parents said it would be good for me to come back but I constantly feel like I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown at all times. Maybe that’s an exaggeration but at the moment I haven’t gotten good sleep in days and I don’t feel good. I am so tempted to just book a ticket home.
I spent June-August looking at apartments so I could move out of West Hollywood. One of my roommates was absolutely toxic (a whole other story that we will not waste energy on recounting) and so I ended up looking for a place with one of my college friends. We toured places for months, in the morning before work and on the weekends. It was not a fun experience 0/10 would not recommend. I just felt really stuck and like couldn’t do anything all summer because I had to be available to see some apartment at any given notice.
Finally, we found a place and moved in at the end of August. Within less than 2 weeks, I packed and moved all of my stuff on my own and then I flew home for a few weeks for a much-needed break. Then I booked a trip to New York. Things were on the up. I definitely think a lot of the negativity was in my head and a mindset shift could’ve made things better, but the move/change of environment/removing my roommate from my life instantly made a difference. In July I also switched teams at work and went from working on three lines of business to one, so that was big as well.
My flop era spanned the first 9 months of 2022, and I learned a lot. It’s crazy how time flies and how quickly things can change. It’s funny how when you’re in a bad space, all you do is wish for change, but when things are going well you hope they never change. But change is the only constant in life. It’s reliable in that way and I’m trying to find comfort in that.
Journal excerpt from October 19, 2022:
I have come along way in the last month. Our apartment is feeling much more homey. And I’m seeing friends all the time. And I went to NY and had a great time. Doing things is my favorite thing. Now I’m sick for the first time since COVID and it’s weird. All I know is that I’m going to be ok.
Now in 2023, I’ve reconnected with pretty much all my friends and have even made some new ones. I log off from work around 6pm instead of 9pm. I’m photographing, I’m adventuring, I’m eating well. If there is another global pandemic (knock on wood), I would still 1000% drop everything and move back to Bellevue in literally two seconds, but for now, Mom and Dad, I’m doing okay. Come visit!
I have a lot of blog posts to write for 2023 already, but here’s what life looks like lately upon the end of my flop era:
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