Creative Space with Jennifer Logue

The LA Experiment (and My Return to Creative Space)

• Jennifer Logue

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In this episode of Creative Space, I’m getting real about what it means to truly practice what I preach—especially after taking a break from the podcast to do some serious inner work. As a coach, I help people get clear on their goals and make them happen, but I also do the same work myself with my own coach.

When I first started working with my coach, my focus was growing my coaching practice. But in the process, I ended up unearthing a dream I’d buried for years: moving to LA.

I spent a long time doing everything but that. When I bought my house in Philly, I tried to convince myself I could let go of that dream and just make the best of where I was. But it wouldn’t let me go.

For years I felt stuck, trying to force myself to be happy in my so-called “dream house,” until I finally did the hard work to face what I really wanted.

In 2025, I committed to spending one month in LA—what I called my “LA experiment.” That one decision set off a chain of events that turned this into one of the coolest, most creative years of my life so far.

I hope it inspires you to get real with yourself and go after your dreams, even the scary ones!

00:00 — Welcome Back After the Break
 00:54 — Why I Took a Sabbatical
 02:40 — Coaching Others While Getting Coached Myself
 03:25 — Admitting the West Coast Dream
 05:08 — Buying the House Instead
 05:41 — Realizing I Felt Stuck
 06:16 — We’re Like Plants Needing the Right Environment
 07:08 — The Hardest Goals Are the Ones We Avoid
 07:54 — Naming the Excuses Out Loud
 09:09 — The “80-Year-Old Regret” Question
 09:55 — Facing the Terror of Change
 10:35 — Committing to a Small Goal: The LA Holiday
 11:23 — Dreading the Trip and Saying Yes Anyway
 12:08 — The Magic of That First LA Stay
 13:04 — Returning Home and Feeling Stuck Again
 14:02 — Testing Other Cities for Size
 15:03 — Deciding on the One-Month LA Experiment
 15:46 — What's next for me and "Creative Space"

If you’ve got a dream you’ve buried, or you’re feeling stuck like I was, let’s talk. I’d love to offer you a free 30-minute discovery call to see if coaching might help you take that first step. Book here.


Jennifer Logue:

Hello and welcome to Creative Space, a podcast where we explore, learn and grow in creativity together and in the we I really include myself in that. My name is Jennifer Logue and I'm your host, who's been a bit MIA these last few months. Now, about that, I really appreciate you tuning in. After my six month plus hiatus, I feel like I should have called or at least like let you guys know what was going on instead of my Irish exit. But I literally needed some creative space to figure out some things for myself, and it's been quite the adventure.

Jennifer Logue:

A friend asked me recently what I've been working on since starting my podcast Sabbatical and while there have been quite a few songwriting sessions and a few scripts alongside my coaching practice, I've been in the midst of perhaps the biggest creative project I've ever had, and that's making over my own life. Blame it on the day job, right, that's the beauty about being a coach. Sure, your clients benefit from your coaching, but I've found myself inspired by my clients as well and, like my clients, I have a coach, someone to shine a light on limiting beliefs and dreams I had buried but kept calling me. So one of those dreams a big one was to move to the West Coast, la in particular. It's been in the back of my mind since my New York days. That's a really long time ago, but for whatever reason, I meandered on the path getting there. As much as I love my hometown of Philly, I never meant to stay as long as I did after leaving New York. The initial plan was to save up for a car, work on my driving and then go to LA, but I ended up putting down roots in Philly and I even went so far as buying a house. So for a long time, saving up for that house was my goal, and because I was so laser-focused on it, it was easy to compartmentalize other dreams, like that West Coast chapter. So I guess I altered my original plan. I thought I'll buy my house and then I'll simply just travel more. But getting a house didn't exactly go super smoothly. I put offers on dozens of houses in 2021.

Jennifer Logue:

And, being a single woman, it was extra challenging competing with buyers with all cash. Where do they come from, I don't know. Or like the dual income households. And I remember in Philly at the time I was doing Airbnb because I didn't want to commit to a lease of any kind until I had locked in my mortgage. I even gave up coffee until I got my house. Like I was so laser focused, I would tell myself coffee is for closers and that was a little brutal, but it was definitely motivating for me to achieve that goal. But was it the right goal? I don't know. Sometimes, you know, you go to climb a mountain and then you get to the top and you realize, oh no, this isn't the mountain that I wanted.

Jennifer Logue:

So in the midst of all that, I remember I was taking a walk after work and it was a beautiful, sunny fall day and out of nowhere a thought came to me like maybe I should just give up on this whole house thing and move to LA. I remember I stopped for a moment and I sat on a nearby bench to think about it. I had put an offer on a house and it was the one I ended up buying and we were still waiting to hear back from the owner. And, for whatever reason, despite the fact that this is what I thought I wanted, I didn't have a piece about it, and a tool one of my coaches taught me years ago was to weigh options by how heavy or light they feel. So, even though on paper, my pros and cons list clearly marked buying a house as the best, most responsible, smart thing I could do at the time, especially with those low interest rates. In my heart it felt heavy, it felt like a dead end and as irresponsible and random as moving to LA looked on paper. In my heart at the time it felt light and right. It just felt in alignment. I had a peace about it. I mean, I already had all my belongings in my RAV4. I didn't have any furniture at the time, you know. So in that moment I was like, wait a minute, maybe I should just hit pause on buying a house, take my down payment and just move to LA. Well, spoiler alert, I ignored my intuition and I bought the house in 2021 instead.

Jennifer Logue:

And the funny thing is, I thought once I bought the house, I would feel settled. I thought once I bought the house, I would feel rooted, a peace once I moved in. But no, that did not happen. Nope. First I thought, oh, it's because I need to decorate. So decorate I did. But no matter how cute and how cozy and how many crystals I put up in that house, like the peace did not come. Like all the Palo Santo, like all of like the sound healing, none of it.

Jennifer Logue:

There was always this barely audible buzz of discontent, this conflict within my spirit, and I knew deep down this wasn't where I was supposed to be. But I kept reasoning it away. I kept myself busy, I threw myself into work, into creative projects like this podcast. You know being social, and there is nothing wrong with where I lived, like, I just want to put that out there right now. It's a wonderful place to live, but it's a wonderful place if it is the place for you.

Jennifer Logue:

And what I've come to find is that we're kind of like plants If we're not in the right environment for us, we're not going to blossom fully. I was starting to feel like a plant whose roots are like growing up into the sides of the pot, you know, and just, I just was feeling really stuck. And it wasn't until I started with my current coach that I even talked about the West Coast dream out loud. I had buried it so well. Initially we were focused on growing my coaching business. But that's the thing about coaching. Sometimes that stuck feeling is coming from goals you won't even let yourself pursue the hardest thing. Yeah, that's probably the thing you should do. The scarier the better, because I found that our fears can teach us so much about ourselves and how we can grow.

Jennifer Logue:

But anyway, the West Coast dream came up in one of our sessions and I was asked what was keeping me from it and my answer it's just a silly dream. La is for people pursuing a career in the arts and I'm too old for that. Now I have a house, I have stability, I have a low interest rate. Why would I give all of that up for uncertainty? Oh, and the jadedness I felt. That's just part of getting older. Sometimes you need to give up a dream to have peace. Listen, we can delude ourselves into believing so many things and coaches just like call BS on it.

Jennifer Logue:

So I had so many excuses in that session and my coach again called me out on it and then he asked how would you feel at 80 years old if you didn't make the move to the West Coast? Now we went to the same coaching school, so I had a feeling this question was going to come up, and yet it still hit me like a ton of bricks and I said and I really meant it I would deeply regret it if I didn't take the chance. So all of a sudden my life got very clear. All of a sudden that inner conflict lifted, now that I was at least entertaining the idea of making the move to the West Coast. Of course the idea terrified me, like what do I do with all of my stuff? I can't just give up all of my nice things, the furniture. I'm comfortable here, a house where I don't share walls with anyone. How would I sing in an apartment? How would I be free to create with neighbors or roommates? And on and on and on. I can best describe myself during this session as a cat avoiding getting a bath. I was like clinging to the rugs, to the furniture, clinging to anything I could to avoid getting wet. But you know, rome wasn't built in a day.

Jennifer Logue:

So by the end of the session I finally set a smaller goal of spending the holidays in LA to see if I liked it. And I wish I could tell you that I was excited about the trip once I booked it. But I was dreading it. Why would I leave Christmas on the east coast for LA? I mean, a summer-like Christmas sounded horrible to me back then. But I could not cancel because I committed to pet sitting for a friend who was traveling internationally. So, as my coach gleefully said to me, you're all in baby. So yeah, I was all in, and it's funny like I can run half marathons and wake up at 5am to work out every day.

Jennifer Logue:

It's not hard for me to eat healthy or launch businesses or burn the midnight oil, but when it comes to pursuing a goal that requires losing my safe, cozy space and my routine, it's really hard for me to do. It's very easy for me to reason out pursuing a goal like that at all. So I went into my two-week LA holiday trip begrudgingly and that's the best word I can use for it. I went in with zero expectations. I didn't plan much of anything really at first. All I had to do was get myself there and hang out with the cat and just let the trip unfold.

Jennifer Logue:

Naturally, and in the interest of not making this episode too long, that initial trip ended up being magical. Like I bumped into old friends I hadn't seen in years. I connected with new ones. I felt this heaviness that I had been carrying around begin to lift, like I really felt my spark coming back and at first I thought I could carry my spark coming back. And at first I thought I could carry that spark with me back to Philly Again. Maybe I just need to travel more. That was the thought going into this. But the minute I got back home I wanted to go back. Even in my cozy house, my old comfort zone, it didn't feel quite so comfortable anymore. It felt stagnant. It felt more like a cage now than a sanctuary, you know.

Jennifer Logue:

So that week I started making calls to move sometime in January to LA, and then the wildfires happened and I was feeling all sorts of feelings. Back then my heart pretty much crumpled into a million little pieces. It was back to the drawing board with my coach and you know I decided maybe moving to LA right now isn't the move, but maybe I can travel and work remotely to keep my spark alive. You know, maybe I can set a goal of living in LA for one full month before the end of 2025. And by then things hopefully will be better here.

Jennifer Logue:

So I started off 2025 trying out other cities for size. You know I spent some time in New York to see if I liked living there again and it was great reconnecting with friends, but the city didn't feel like home anymore. There wasn't a spark and I really felt in my bones that that chapter was over. Then I spent some time in Trolley Square in Delaware really cute neighborhood. I had considered buying a home there back in 2021, and I was like, hey, why not give it a try? And while it was lovely to visit and there was an amazing Greek spot that I would drive to anytime, it just didn't feel right long term, as good as that Greek food was. Then I thought about Nashville and I went to work remotely there and again it was great to visit, but it didn't feel like home either.

Jennifer Logue:

But my Nashville trip was back in April of this year and it was around that time that my LA friend reached out again about cat sitting in May and June. She needed someone from May 16th to May 23rd and then from June 5th to June 16th, and up until that point in my mind I had been planning on a full month in LA in October and then I would potentially make a move in 2026. But now, with this new opportunity, I was like, well, what if I did a full month in May instead? So to fill the gap in between the two cat sits, I reached out to an old friend who just so happened to have a room available in his apartment during that time because his roommate was filming in Fiji yes, very glamorous and I could sublet that room for a really inexpensive amount. So everything was falling into place.

Jennifer Logue:

Now, despite how much everything was flowing and falling into place, I still had a lot of fear going into my one-month LA stay. I actually kept two separate flights booked just in case I didn't want to stay in between cat sits. I guess I was just nervous about working East Coast hours on the West Coast, and then I was nervous about being away from my cozy gilded cage let's call it what it was, even though I knew deep down I wasn't happy there. So anyway, just a little side note here. Growth is not linear. It takes time to form new neural pathways, and when we're back in our old environments it's easy to slip into old habits and old ways of thinking. So that's why, when people give up drugs or alcohol, they also need to give up their old friends and the old places they used to hang out too, because it can be really easy to regress. So just want to make that little point before I hop into the rest of my story.

Jennifer Logue:

Anyway. But four days into my month-long LA stay. I was rocking and rolling, so I cancelled the return flight and made the decision to stay the full month. Then an opportunity came up for me to cat sit for a month in Santa Monica, where I am right now, and so I took it, and now I'm here until the end of July. So what started as a one month trip turned into almost three months, and I feel myself expanding in so many ways and it's hard to explain, but my friends back home see it and I feel it. I finally feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be in this chapter of my life.

Jennifer Logue:

So what's next after this trip? Well, this podcast episode has gotten way too long already, so I'll have to do a follow-up, but what I can say is baby, I'm just getting started. Oh, and, in case you're wondering, when is she going to do interviews again, I'm currently booking guests, so there's a lot to look forward to over the next few months on Creative Space. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to the story of my sabbatical and return to Creative Space. I hope it inspired you in some way to take a look at some of those goals maybe that you're afraid to look at and go for them. Take action. My name is Jennifer Logue. Until next time, thank you.