Beautifully insightful post my friend. Being yourself is a lifelong process, but seemingly one people do not attempt to begin. Best to you in the Bay Area, I am a South Bay native myself and can vouch for the culture being accelerated, which has both its pros and cons. Definitely a place where you need to find your tribe, which it sounds like you're making progress towards.
Hey, thanks for reading!
I'm actually going to be going back to LA in a few months, sort of making a return to where all of this started from. (Need to be around more artist types right now in my life, I think.) It's gonna be an interesting near future, either way.