I Moved to New York During the Pandemic
2020 August 16
Why did I do this?
I could list out all of the logical reasons for doing this in August of 2020, during the (hopefully) peak of the pandemic in the US, such as the fact that cases are way down in New York while they are rising in the rest of the country, and that rent prices here are much lower, with how many people have left the city leaving many vacancies and way less renters. But for as many reasons as there are for this move being logical, you could easily find many reasons against doing so.
I think it is never actually going to be the right time to make any big life decision, whether that’s moving to a new city, starting a business, starting a relationship, adopting a pet, etc. There are definitely really bad times to do these things (for example, please don’t adopt a puppy if you don’t have time to properly raise a puppy), but there are never good times to do it. Even when times are good, it’s easy to find many reasons to not do these things and wait for a better time.
Even though I would have liked to move here in April at the end of my 2-month Europe trip. I returned early from Europe to Iowa in March and waited a few months back at my parents’ place, which is a place that I definitely appreciate having the option to stay at if I ever need to, but it’s also a place that I don’t want to spend a big chunk of the latter half of my 20s in.
Once this became the new normal, and public places started opening up again with proper precautions, it became less of a really bad time to move to New York, and just became closer to a regular bad time to move to New York. My mom drove me to meet up with my couple friends, Matt and Nicole, from college who were going back to their apartment in Manhattan after staying in Omaha for a while (since they are both from there), and we carpooled all the way from Omaha to New York in the span of 2 days.
While still doing my daily client work, I started looking for an apartment, and saw some really good ones in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens (all virtually, of course). After about 2 weeks, I ended up in a great apartment in Spanish Harlem (Am I a part of the gentrification problem now? Topic for another post?) with 2 new great roommates.
After dealing with a shocking amount of paperwork, making sure all “t”s were crossed and all “i”s dotted, I moved into the new apartment. Luckily, the move was relatively easy as I packed pretty minimally in case I needed to back down and hightail it back to Iowa, and I figured I could buy some furniture here (which I just did today) and get the rest of my things on a visit later.
After an exhausting welcome week, one of my roommates and one of her friends went to Rockaway Beach and I tagged along. It was a much needed “nature” break from 3 weeks in one of the most urbanized places in the world. It kind of reminded me of this break from a big city when I initially studied abroad in Buenos Aires.
Now I’m lying awake in bed on a Sunday night writing this blog post because I feel kind of restless and a little nervous, but that’s natural. It would be weird if I wasn’t nervous about all this, even without the pandemic happening. I want to live my life, and I will push through challenging circumstances (taking proper precautions, of course) in a consistent effort to reach my goals as I always have.