A Change of Pace
You can’t spell peace without pace—which has been very relevant since we decided to leave NYC. It doesn’t matter if you operate at a slower pace in New York, you will still be bound by the pace in which the world moves around you.
This feeling of a place dictating the pace created a very strong dissonance during the pandemic as well. In moments of personal slowness or isolation, the world is still moving quickly outside and around you. Rather than being able to sink into idle moments, it creates some sort of existential FOMO and anxiety. This wasn’t the driving factor in the move, but definitely a known and welcomed change.
The official story begins a few months ago when we made the decision to move to the west coast. I switched roles and had been working on a team based on the west coast (from the east coast). Timezone difference, working from home, and creeping pandemic work life balance made things generally unsustainable. Secondly, it doesn’t help that literally everything is harder to do in NYC.
Raise your hand if you have had to decide between milk or juice (but not both!) when thinking about your subway ride home from the grocery store. 👋
The last factor here, which is the one I didn’t account for, is that my priorities changed. I never anticipated that as I got older the things I valued would change so significantly. Perhaps this was driven by a series of global crises, who knows! What I do know is that I felt misaligned to the benefits of my location. I found myself turning into a weekend warrior who drives 3-4 hours to be in the mountains… just for the convenience of riding a shit filled subway to restaurants I never visit because they are too crowded.
The hardest thing about deciding where to move was that we had mostly no idea what we wanted. We knew for sure what we didnt want. But somehow that’s way different than being sure of what you want. So we decided we would just move to Seattle. We both had always been interested in the PNW—but never visited. So we booked a 7 day trip with 5 days filled with apartment hunting. The logic was, we just needed to confirm we didn’t hate it there by visiting once. I especially wanted to visit peak rainy season to get a glimpse of what I was getting myself into.
By the last day of our trip, we found an apartment we thought we liked. Rates were going up as Seattle started to transition into its beautiful summer. One thing that’s interesting here is that almost every single day an apartment is on the market, the rate goes up. This creates a lot of pressure to get an application in immediately, and the fact that Seattle is first come first serve. There are no bidding wars like NYC (which is refreshing). If you are the first candidate to get your application in, and meet the minimum requirements, it doesn’t matter if Jeff Bezos himself is one application behind you offering billions—you will get the apartment.
Anyway, the apartment rate went up way too high so we bailed on applying but found a similar unit in the same building and signed a leas sight unseen. Right after that, we got our affairs in order, booked our flights, and set out for the PNW.
Shot on the ferry back to Seattle from the San Juan Islands.
