Moving Out of New York After Seven Years

Manhattan, New York City. 2015. 

Brooklyn, New York City. 2022.

On November 1, I moved out of New York City after seven years to start a completely new chapter in my life. Coincidentally, when I had first moved here for college, it was for the same reason: to start a completely new chapter. At the time, the fall of 2015 when I was just 18 years old, I had felt completely boxed into my life in San Jose, California. 

What is it about huge cities that make us feel like there's an endless road of possibility — as compared to, say, moving to Kearney, Nebraska? Is it the anonymity — the sheer amount of people surrounding you that allows your face to disappear in the crowd, that gives you the confidence to do what you've always feared to do? The ironic part of big cities is that you have the freedom to act like no one's watching with the more people that there are. The more faces that there are around, the less time there is to focus on any specific person. 

I was a buzzing creative as a child, an enthusiastic writer and performer, whose personality felt too big — or misunderstood — for the small-mindedness that I perceived most of peers possessed. Many of the other Asian and Indian students pursued mathematics, medicine, and computer engineering as a means of financial stability, not to necessarily follow their ultimate passion. A college degree was a ticket to a steady job, a six-figure paycheck, a house and family by age 30, and comfortable savings to purchase the latest Prada purse or take a trip to Europe once a year. Understandably so, when our parents were the exemplary models of this path working well. For them, a degree was the first step to a neatly outlined checkbox of life events. 

For many of the judgmental elders that surrounded our challenging, academic-centered environment, the most liberal art-esque major they could think of was law. Even law was too out-there for some, forget studying film direction, musical theater, or graphic design. Those majors were thought of as quackery; equivalent to throwing your money away on an education. What many older immigrant generations often fail to understand about the American collegiate system is that there is an inherent value for creatives in practicing their craft, finding a community of like-minded artists and potential collaborators, and spending their years actually enjoying their education, excited to go to class every day. Isn't studying something you hate, and dreading to go to class, the same as throwing your money away on an education? 

I haven't just left a city, I've left a lifestyle. The familiar sounds, ways to pass the time, and people I took comfort in are now across the country. It will be the most difficult but necessary challenge to forge a new path. Here we go.