Bars, Bodegas, and Open Fields

When I speak to someone about my move from Brooklyn to the countryside of Connecticut, one of the first things I always get asked is what I miss about living in the city. Usually, my first and (mostly) honest response is “not much” but when I think about it a little more earnestly, the truth is a little greyer.

Even before the mass exodus out of NYC to the outlying countryside (Hudson Valley, The Catskills, Litchfield County, etc.) that covid brought, I was craving change.

At the end of 2018, I ended what I thought was a forever move to Paris in a bit of a traumatic way… a job I thought was the dream ended being very challenging for a multitude of reasons, and when I was denied a work visa, I saw it as the universe telling me that it just wasn’t my time and went back to the same Brooklyn apartment I’d been living in since 2013. I was so happy to be back in a place that felt so much like home, but at the same time, everything felt different. I’d changed, the neighborhood had changed, and even some of my closest friendships had changed.

A bit heartbroken about all of the above, I started to feel claustrophobic in my life; but the reality of making a move to anywhere other than another one of the 5 boroughs felt impossible given we were still in the office full-time and there was no financial way I could support both city rent and a country mortgage if I wanted to entertain a weekend place. Then came the pandemic, and of course everything changed… work went remote, immediately almost all my close friends left the city overnight, and I was starting to see that maybe moving out of the city was a possibility after all.