The Best Part of My Day Was Over by 7am

I moved from Phoenix to Los Angeles in 2021, and I moved for exactly one reason: I wanted to. Not for a job, not for a person. Southern California was the place I loved most in the world, and one day I decided to go live in it. I tended bar in Venice, kept my travel business going with beach shots and my old blog, and started every morning in the water.

Here's what that actually looked like. The alarm goes at 4:45. I hit snooze once, because I'm a person, not a machine. At 4:54 I get up for real. I'm a true morning person, the kind who doesn't need coffee, so this ungodly hour was somehow perfect for me. Bikini, wetsuit, grab the board, run across two streets and then across the sand, and into the cold.

I learned to surf as a kid, actually. My dad was stationed in Oceanside for part of my childhood, so I'd spend stretches of summer and the holidays out there with him. So I wasn't starting from nothing when I paddled out in Venice. But I wasn't a pro either. I'm a solid six out of ten, and I'll happily tell you so. Some mornings I'd catch the swell and get to my feet and feel like I'd figured out the whole ocean. Other mornings it was a wipeout, salt water straight up the nose, shake it off, try again.

The thing nobody tells you about surfing before work is that you're not alone out there. Not even close. At dawn, Venice fills up with people catching a few waves before their real lives start. Pros, total beginners, little kids getting a session in before school. That crowd was the best possible introduction to being an Angeleno. Bobbing around out there with all those sunbleached, saltwater angels, waiting for a set, is one of my favorite things I have ever done.

I kept it up because I live to challenge myself. That's just how I'm built, and it shows up everywhere in my life. In how I travel, in how I take care of my health, in how I show up for my friends and my dogs. I want to leave everything a little better than I found it, and I've learned that starts with me. Getting in the cold water before the sun was fully up, being a little bad at something and doing it anyway, that set the tone for the whole day.

Which is really what I want for the people I plan trips for, too. The best moments are almost never the comfortable ones. They're the early alarm, the cold water, the thing you weren't sure you could do. So my advice, whether you're standing on a surfboard in Venice or standing at the edge of somewhere brand new: get wet. You've got this.