A Life Update

This is a post I never imagined writing, not right now at least. But if I’ve learned anything from the past few months, it’s that you gotta roll with the (often unexpected) punches.

So, here’s the news: we are moving. Or, as we like to think of it, temporarily relocating. I want to start by saying that we love the city. Living in the suburbs for most of the summer simply confirmed what we felt in our hearts: we are city people. We love the energy, our neighborhood, our small abode. We love walking everywhere, having everything we need within a two block radius, and exploring the parks and streets. We love the museums, the vibrant culture, and the people. And, for the record, we love all of those things right now, too! Have some things changed? Sure. But contrary to the perspective of some wealthy comedians (and here), we still adore it here. COVID or not, New York has our hearts. And yet, for the time being, we are choosing to leave.

Our decision to leave the city was not made easily or lightly. But after a tough couple of years of running the numbers, budgeting, and running the numbers again, we decided that financially it was best for us to leave in order to save money. Our ultimate goal, and the reason behind so much of what we do (more on that here) is to grow our family. And for us, that comes with a lot of extra costs and plans that we never anticipated. For us, the next steps of that process are big, costly and require us to be in the best place we can be, both phsycially, mentally and financially. On top of that, there are conditions about our current apartment that make it incredibly problematic for us to stay. So, in this topsy turvy time, when I am working from home and we have some flexibility, why not save as much as we possibly can?

There are a lot of things we don’t know. We have no idea what the future is going to look like, how this pandemic will continue to impact our daily life or what will happen come November (so please, vote). We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, let alone next year. What we do know, is that we want to have a baby, we want to be in New York City and ideally, we want to have said baby in New York City. But right now we also know that we can make a few big changes in order to make those dreams a reality. So we decided to go for it.

Sometimes I feel deeply sad. I moved to New York City without a job, into an apartment with strangers, pretty much for love (more on that here). It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s been home. As I sit writing this, I hear a saxophone player outside, I see the evening skyline, I feel an ache in my heart. But whenever I get down, C reminds me that this too shall pass. This is a temporary solution, a necessary step, a phase that we will make the most of.

In a few weeks we will move all of our stuff into a moving truck and then a storage unit and relocate to suburban (rural) New Jersey with Christian’s parents, an option we are grateful for and privileged to have. Our goal is to spend as much time as we need to getting back on our feet, and then returning to the city when the time is right. It’s scary, but also a little exciting. Christian has lived in this apartment for ten years (a record in New York real estate rentals, I assure you) and I moved in four years later, so it will be pretty special to pick out our next place together.

In the meantime we are enjoying every last minute in the space and place we love so very much. We even created a list of all of the things we plan to do, just to make sure we cover all of our bases, and we’ve already checked off quite a bit! It doesn’t consist of the hottest spots or coolest activities – we are neither – but what it has is the things that make New York home for us.

So that’s it, friends! That’s where we’re at. Thank you for your love and support, it means so much to us.