Op-Ed: Are Californians fleeing en masse to Texas? The reality is complicated.
On Sunday, a couple of guys in my office—a few months out from turning 30—sang along with a band of about 10 other guys I had not met. The guy who plays the guitar was a new friend, so they had agreed to meet up in a couple of weeks so he could show me how songs from his new album were written and arranged.
A week passed and I heard nothing. Then, about a month later, he called. He had been accepted into the music school he wanted to attend, and was giving me a tour of the campus. He was very excited to be living in the city and to be going to school.
I was stunned. I had assumed that his friends were doing what they wanted and he was happy. Instead, he was happy just like me, and he was going to school to write music. I knew then that I had fallen in love with the world and his songs. I told my friends about it, and over the next couple of weeks, they began showing up one after another.
All of that started in the fall of 2013. I moved back to LA after living in Austin for two years to work at a web design firm called Zendesk. I had a couple of good references from my previous job, and when I was accepted into an online music school that I had heard about—the one that made so many people call me in the past—I signed up for two classes.
My dream was to be a musician, and I would be one by the time I was 40.
The reason I had left Austin was that I felt compelled to be a part of my community, which meant I would have to leave the city I had grown up in. So I moved back.
I returned from Austin to Los Angeles, where life was not as stressful as it had been in Austin, and I was able to explore new things. So, rather than just be in LA for one semester, I decided to sign up for three, which would give me room to explore a new part of the city.
I had been to a