A love letter to LA....

There’s something deeply paradoxical about falling in love with a city. It’s not a person you can hold or speak to, yet the connection feels just as real, as vivid as a memory. That’s how I’ve always felt about Los Angeles. To me, arriving 🛬 in Los Angeles always feels like a hug from a lover or a forever friend – the embrace is grounding, affirming, and somehow familiar, without a word needing to be said. ❤️

During the years of 2017-2020 when my LA commutes were rather frequent- No matter how turbulent those often-cheaper Alaskan Airlines or JetBlue flights ✈️would be, the discomfort was a small price to pay to breathe that LA feeling he second I am off the ground. 🛣️It was the air that surpassed Manhattan’s tenfold, not just in its aesthetic appeal but in the way Angelenos truly cherished it.☁️

Over 40+ visits to LA- never was there a time when I have not visited and experienced LA’s nature. Even if I were in town for 48 hours, I would make sure that no matter what I do, I get out and do a hike, walk, or sit in the sun and observe all to be grateful for in La La Land☀️

Often, the experience of it, in fact, almost exclusively every single time, would result in either hidden or real tears as I was with my best friends in our small convertible car ride🚗 from West Hollywood to Downtown (where I would usually stay), turning on the small heater the convertible the temperature and sunset go down at the same time. Those moments were priceless, and if I could click a button to put them back in time, I would probably give up many things that make me happy in life to go back to that time and feeling.🌞

The Columbia circle was hard to manage as an only Croatian and one of the rare Europeans🇪🇺, as well as a first-generation student whose parents could not guide her through registration, ups and downs, American routine & schedule, or time zone🕛 🕧 🇭🇷- and that was something I underestimated to be a cost of this all 😢Often, even though it was hard to admit- I did not feel like I belonged, at least on campus…..Constant commutes to meet internationals 🇧🇷🇨🇭🇹🇷🇮🇳 downtown from NYU and Parsons were practical and fulfilling…. but still often just an extra addition to my courseload and lack of community on campus and the energy I had in LA…. especially as winter was coming by. 🙁 Opportunities to relax were becoming more complicated and not something promoted by Columbia environment, especially for us who had no close home 🏠 ( read for me 24 h journey three flights and two h car ride) to relax on the weekends or family during mid-terms fall breaks or finals. 🚫

Hence, such a heavy courseload plus often post-boarding school freedom & being in the energy of New York City was almost a trap for burn-outs and bubble to burst- and inability to be grateful & stop. I could not smell or see the roses (and to be honest… we did not have that many in New York, and the ones from Whole Foods don’t count…)🌹😭

So…I put my courage hat on and said..it’s time. Let’s do it. Let’s go too. I had a belief that this was what could save me from essentially and potentially dropping out in the sophomore year of how strong the temptation of depression & loneliness was getting…

But I got this- I love LA & LA felt like it would love me. Yet.. I knew internally that a 3-day trip wouldn't be able to cure my depression as I knew I had to go back to New York and classes🏛️…. Still, at last, I was attempting to be brave and try…and was I wrong in thinking LA could not do its magic? Not only did it, but it was also a full game-changer and who I became as a young adult.🧑

My best friend and roommate from boarding school 🏫 🇬🇧 (essentially a sister 👩), who was one of the rare ones from other fellow internationals who made it across the pond -has assisted in & creating a safe, welcoming space for us both to continue feeling free, growing, and executing our dreams and not feel lonely. To international students, LA was our freedom & dream reflection, a no-pressure and judgment place to live, take our time, breathe, and be grateful for where we are and how far we have come. LA had a rhythm that was the antithesis of New York’s relentless hustle & it made me feel like a charm for my inner calm and content soul. LA was warm, even when it rained. It was beautiful even when stuck in traffic that may go for hours - it was LA ….and a feeling….a feeling I was getting attached to…On top of LA giving me access to my best friend, who was one of the rare ones from other fellow internationals who made it across the pond - LA (well technically, her and USC but indeed also LA) - it also gave me an experience of my first serious relationship that lasted all through the college. My boyfriend and I lived in the movie-like bi-coastal of NY/ LA and were madly in love in the school of our dreams. Both New Yorkers in soul and spirit and lucky to have his parents back home- LA gave us the pace, peace & sun we needed and vision to continue building our goals in both cities- and be our young selves there in LA with resources, nature and fortune to take time to drive around in a car in empty roads at night, watch the sunset over the ocean or the skyline of the hill, rush to In and Out and drive through on-demand till 2 AM (which is late for LA but made us sleep at way more normal time than NY)… or slow dates at John & Vinny’s every time we are in our West Coast “home.” …The dream that was.

We got to appreciate LA and its nature each time more and more together as a couple or together with my new USC family. I almost felt like a student and attended most school functions ( Go Trojans!) . I could not express the feeling of falling in love 🩶 with LA with a healthy growing curve… and making the goodbye from those 4 day weekends harder and harder each time- LA went from a crush- into a deep, routed feeling of stability & internal and external sun.

LA gave me space—literal and metaphorical ❗️and this is why I am so passionate about it and us trying to do whatever we can keep it..

Each time driving back, Downtown made me appreciate LA even more, its new buildings, and the iconic view even more to the level I could not comprehend- Downtown (no matter how similar to New York) was home- my spiritual, physical and new home. As I was driving to K-town to get back home, I saw many different faces and often sad scenes that LA needs to work on, just like every major city…. regardless of the bustle of the neighborhoods closer to the south ….and Arts District. Crossing them…. it made me realize more and more how LA was a place where the city’s diversity, its economic contrasts, and its unapologetic creativity felt like a mirror of everything …. Its neighborhoods were as varied as its people, representing every possible intersection of culture, class, and ambition. Whether I was hiking in and through Griffith Park, driving along the PCH, sharing laughter over dinner in $10 tacos truck, or exploring the influence of healthy food and lifestyle…-LA had a way of grounding me in the present … while inspiring hope for the future & having the skies of the open nature right in front of my eyes. The constant sun and even a bit of rain were just a feeling that was hard to take for granted- and very hard to say goodbye to. 😭👋

But love is rarely straightforward. 💜Time has passed, and with it came loss—loss of friendships, of my first love, and, in some ways, of the person I was when I first arrived in LA.🕛 I haven’t been back in years, and yet the city still feels like unrequited love, a place that holds pieces of me I can’t get back, but it has also changed with the ability of my dear LA to be it was- a place of stability and perfect nature….🦋

Needless to say, my friends who stayed and are slowly building their families 👶in what even to me seemed like a much more kid-friendly place to raise a child- all of them worry about their lives and future due to circumstances that are not even economical nor political but those of the nature that they love and care for :( Complicated. But the generic inability to enjoy the present without worrying about the future in the back of my mind -would be a limbo - that I could no longer survive - no matter how much I love LA… My friends who stayed-, you are so strong…

Hence, this is part of the love letter 💌where it almost becomes one of despise as what is going on now. That is a true heartbreak…. Even writing this makes me sad- and just in one of my post-college visits in 2021, I could feel too how LA suddenly became quieter, and even if it were sunny, the wind of emotions, fear, and alertness (and actual wind would feel more vigorous….For myself, initially, even without the natural disasters and long-term fear that I tried to block off my mind in the first place, losing my bicoastal life & my merged college experience of USC/ Columbia & my first love - is something that took me a while to get over and used to. How privileged was that loss? Still, it is something that now, after many years, feels like a sad reality of life that cannot go back in time, and that now, when I look, especially when seeing what is going on, feels like the most grateful and surreal memories of my life for all said reasons above even though it is over forever.

Yet, seeing what has been starting to happen around the same time we graduated in 2020 is something I cannot get over yet. How can something so beautiful get destroyed in amounts of seconds? How can life be so unpredictable? (non ironically, I first learned about COVID in an LA supermarket with my boyfriend at a time and have the most significant flash bomb memory of how freaking grateful I was I dragged him that day that we did that hike…) How are we so small in front of the significant nature and winds and the ability for nature to go against us and not for us? 🌊☔️🌩️ (which was always my root and love for LA)? For a dreamer like me, and I assume many LAers, that is hard to fathom…Yet just like anything in life, whether in silence or not, solo or with someone, we try to do what we can best- first, to survive and see this as a storm we must overcome.

Sunshine🌞 and rainbow 🌈are something I would probably see most in LA in my life…. Still, I guess I even have to accept that it is sadly not what life can always be, especially in repeated patterns of natural disasters like LA …. We as Americans, internationals, global shapers, and everyone must urgently address and put in front of all as much as we think AI, computers, social media, money, capital, political conflicts, and human-made weapons are more complicated or essential than nature- they are not. We cannot sleep on it, no matter how hard it may be. Guess what is more challenging? Evacuating your house on an hour’s notice and losing your loved ones in seconds because they cannot be saved or losing the neighborhood size of New York in seconds and not knowing it can come back…I am never saying that health tech, biotech, fintech, or working with developing and underdeveloped countries is not a priority, nor are the incredibly challenging political conflicts we have globally and locally. To remind all, this is not my Columbia University IR master thesis. It is a love letter to a city- but it is to highlight what every human loves- sun, air, the ability to breathe, and to be with loved ones- LA gave me that from 2016 to 2020 and has given so to millions of people. Hence, let’s help it and also process how serious this is…

The trees that protect us, the sun that gives us peace, the homes worked ages to pay for & build- all gone in vivid natural fears and reactions. How and why? I am honestly not sure, but I am also not the one who can help with climate- max I did was assist in fundraising Climate Fund with Remarkable Ventures, where now is 100 million dollars left to deploy- and while I am so happy about that achievement in the new age of venture and startups I rarely see a productive and successful push for climate…

All I feel like I can do try to share best to my ability and value as many live resources as I can 📰 🧑🏻‍🚒for those fighting out there and surviving to get the water we need, the shelter they need- and to try to save nature and our beloved LA- and for all in between theater there now or as devasted as me just give me a call or FaceTime❤️‍🔥

I love you, LA, always have, and always will…Thank you for giving me space to breathe and be who I am and create the most content and present version of myself …I hope we manage to get you back…. so that one day I can take my future daughter & show her the nature and beauty her mom got to live in 2018…. and telling her this can be her secret and sacred place where and when she needs it….City of Stars, you got this, and thank you for being my North Star…. if I can help anyone, please do not be afraid to reach out… xx Iva Skojo