Here’s what I've learned moving from California to New York City
Three weeks ago I moved from California to New York City.
In a coast-to-coast jaunt, my life has pivoted with no shortage of dramatics.
Graduate school ended in June. I started a new job in July, first working remote then in-person once I arrived in New York in September. Change after change after change, with each small shift begetting multiple waves of additional shifts.
I’ve found a new, great energy that comes with change. Change can renew your motivation to dive into whatever it is that sets fire to your passions, and provide the jolt to get you out of bed without an alarm.
New places and people. Different sets of expectations and ambitions. Old thoughts shed like a husk and, if you allow it, new and wiser perspectives can take their place.
Here in New York I’ve been writing nonstop. Writing for work, reporting on multiple side projects, mapping out more fiction short stories. The city makes for a great muse. Things seem to happen like scenes in a play and characters abound, each playing their roles to perfection.
For a writer, I couldn’t have asked for any better. Working, living, and writing in an upstart and vibrant city that I’ve not yet explored. My professional and social calendar has been full, and in the quiet moments I can steal here and there, I’ve been reading, thinking, and reflecting.
Moving states isn’t always easy. Good friends help. A cheap apartment and a good dive bar. And having a job you don’t dread and co-workers who push you to be better really helps round things out.
As for the writer in me (and perhaps the one in you, too), moving to a city with as rich of a literary history as New York makes things all the more sweeter. The classic, great authors we remember (and the talented ones we don’t) all spent time in the Big Apple — Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Baldwin and Melville.
A typical day for me goes something like this:
Wake up and workout, first thing. Then read before work starts around 9 or 10 AM. Work means writing, reporting, and more writing. That goes on until around 5 or 6 PM. Then the night seems perpetually-young with the amount of things to do in the city — food and drink, sports and games, movies and nightlife.
Activities abound in New York City, and I’ve sprinted full-bore in as many directions as I can manage. But the same things that excite me, as a 25-year-old, makes my adult instincts nervous. The limited wisdom I may have in me signals like a blaring alarm that burnout or worse awaits around every corner.
The pace is too fast; my schedule too full.
So far, the wide-eyed, ambitious kid in me has steered all decision-making in the city. The “adult” in me has taken a back seat, biting his tongue on all trepidation around pace and prospects. Sure, I work full-time and manage my responsibilities like a grownup. Though outside of work, the more mature side of my psyche defers to the inner kid with the dinner-plate-eyes and agape mouth.
The tug-of-war will continue, undoubtedly. But that’s not to say the kid in me makes poor decisions. That kid has drive, guts, and gusto. A will to work and to write and to think. But also a tendency, if not a preference, for overworking and skipping rest stops.
Maybe it’s just the nature of the city. New York can eat you up and spit you out before you even realize what’s happened, at least according to some savvy New Yorkers I’ve spoken to.
I’m not at all banking on this occurring to myself — but what a story that would be.
The small-town young man arrives in the big city. He lives life fast and hard not haphazardly but out of want for adventure and novelty. The city, wise and eternal, has seen the act before a thousand times over. The kid gains confidence, climbs an upward trajectory, has fun over and over again.
Then, perhaps, the city pounces. Humbling others is a specialty for big cities. And big-fish-from-a-small-pond types are known for being poor candidates for handling a beating. Previous success in small markets does little to prepare you for big-market-bludgeonings.
Kid moves home. The small town receives the big city’s discard, battered and bruised. Humbled, certainly, but wiser and hopefully not deterred.
I hope that’s not how this chapter goes. It wouldn’t be all bad, but there are happier endings to be had.
New beginnings are often a toss up. Some go well; others go South.
But like I said, all this would certainly make a good story.