Landslide by Fleetwood Mac

never gets old.

it’s been a rainy day in nyc.
The Knicks are currently playing game 3 as I write this and I just walked up to 108th to try a new shop that just opened.

There’s nothing a walk and a warm drink won’t solve. even our rainiest days in nyc are still beautiful days to live here.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been reminded of this often: I feel so fortunate to be able to say I live and work here and I never want to take that for granted.

Yesterday I bopped around the city, hit some of my favorite spots, and explored some new ones — like the flower district. I walked into a shop and was stunned by the lush, endless rows of rosemary plants they had at the entrance.. it made a long-term memory of the flower district that is permanently buried in my brain.

And while I type on and on about the details of the day that were such a delight.. the forecast was initially going to be rain all day. instead it was perfect. it was a beautiful day in nyc.

I walked 16 miles total — and hourly savored how grateful I am for living here, one year later.

but it wasn’t always this way, and I never thought I’d live here. I’d go as far as saying.. I likely told friends I’d NEVER live here. Paris, Tokyo, or Timisoara... many other cities in the world made the list.

But NYC was never one of them.

Last weekend I was talking to my much younger cousins.. I casually said that one of them should consider moving to another city, maybe even another country.

My cousins have only known living in Jersey. I’m quite the outlier in my family, the black sheep you could say. My immediate family traveled most of my life, and my career meant moving multiple times — but my sister and I are the minority in this way.

Being the first grandchild.. I’m the first of many things. Most of the time my family considers me a little crazy at times — but they have also looked up to me, shared how proud they are of me, and respected me as the wiser older one who has experienced a ton of things already.

He asked a question that I didn’t expect but many have on occasion asked.

“Did you move because you wanted to or because you had to?”

I didn’t hesitate to answer: “both.” He thought this was a cop out initially.

But it didn’t start as WANTING to move to NYC. It started with feeling ready to leave and simultaneously needing a job.

For years I had just felt like the space I was in wasn’t well suited for me. I constantly felt I was facing resistance in my life, a high degree of friction and misunderstanding. Often times in ways that made me feel crazy and alone. A lot of close friends had moved away, or moved into new seasons of life that didn’t include sharing life together like it did before.

As I look back, I can see many spheres of my life where I felt there was a constant resistance.

I was living in ATL in my twenties and as I began to see turning 30 on the horizon, people would ask how I felt about it.. and I just would say I have a feeling I can’t shake that I won’t be here for it. The year I turn 30 feels like I’ll be saying goodbyes.

then in 29 life changed fast.

In Nov of 2024 I landed a great job. Not only was I excited, it just fit. in so many ways it was the kind of role I had always hoped I’d land. Everything started to feel stabilizing. And 30 days later, Dec 2024 — I got laid off.

I began applying and interviewing again. But this time… something changed. I was open to anything. I desperately didn’t want to go through another 6-8 month job search. Always making it to the final rounds, and rarely getting an offer, or hearing back from most applications was going to ruin me.

This time around.. the only places that would reach back out to me were based in NYC.

My closest friends and community felt like I was abandoning them. Some didn’t take it seriously at all.. thought i was being dramatic. But I’d persist — if I get an offer that feels right, there will be little time between signing papers and buying a plane ticket. I remember a conversation in December after I got laid off, where I really needed my friends to reconcile that this was a very real possibility.

4 months later.
4 months of interviews non stop with companies.
Some of them putting me through 14 rounds of interviews, and multiple case studies.

April 2025 — I got the job offer call on a Tuesday.
I was sitting at Bellwood Coffee — Riverside location ofc —
(shout out to Carrie, Celine, Nathan, and the team.)

Wednesday, I said goodbyes at a spontaneous “come by the brewery, we’ll be here all night”.
Lead my last run club run on Thursday night.
Packed a bag Friday.
Flew out Saturday.
Landed at grandma’s place in Edison.
Walked the city to find the office Sunday.
Started on Monday.

All within one week — I said yes to a job, had a celebratory beer with my running partner at run club.. officiated a wedding, said goodbye to a community i invested years of time and resources into.. and my girlfriend, who was so supportive despite the difficulty of LDR, bought a one way ticket, and moved into a little nook at my grandma’s place in jersey before landing in an apt in the city.

… and fast forward to December of 2025: I was laid off again.

the job didn’t work out. project mongoose happened at SAP and every day, for months, people were cut from the company.

once again, right after thanksgiving and exactly a year since my first layoff.

While the job got me to nyc.. nyc is the first time i felt settled and like i wanted to stay.

to know me personally is to know most of my life has been moving. but this felt like coming home. any job keeping me here would be the win… because moving here did so much more for me than i ever expected.

In my first 6 months here, I hosted a friendsgiving, joined a run club here, see my grandma from time to time. and i walk more miles than i sit in traffic.

in so many ways I grew into myself, parts of me I’d forgotten.. the healthiest I’ve been in my life.. and yet just the beginning.

i’m fortunate that I have family nearby and now it is the place I call home.

So I worked my fucking ass off in January. (sorry grandma)

280+ interviews later in under 30 days — I found a new job. Funny enough in the same building.

Jobs change. They come and go. the economy has ups and downs, and relationships grow and sometimes grow distant.

But where we choose to stay.. the position we put ourselves in, or life moves us to… it forms us more than we realize.

I can finally breathe for the first time in my life.

I sleep well.

My body physically holds less stress than it used to.

And my soul has space for so much more joy. and for the first time.. in a very long time.. I look forward to creating again.

To savor delight, and gratitude in my skin felt like something I could only afford in another life. But not on this side.

I feel richly blessed despite not being rich at all.

I come around to this idea often — we like to live as if our friendships and relationships will always be around. I think the usage of social media ‘connectedness’ provides us with that fallacy. But in many ways, I think distance protects us.

Before I moved I’d have this haunting feeling.. that maybe I had lost the best version of me somewhere along the way. Maybe I missed out on something, was too far behind others, or made some decisions that I couldn’t recover from.. and that the man I wanted to become was impossibly out of reach.

When in reality — maybe I was in the wrong place all along. Maybe I had outgrown the space, and needed to have moved long before now.

I was in the wrong environment and I needed to be planted elsewhere.

The right soil. The right air, water, and sun. And quickly I felt growth and the space to breathe.

Maybe the best version of you can’t exist if you stay where you are.

Sure I miss old friends I’ve grown distant from.

But I don’t miss the way I was living and the way I was experiencing life.
In my body and in my soul.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. It felt about time to give a full timeline story of how I ended up here in nyc. And one year after the move just felt right.

Moving forward, I have a standing time frame — monday nights — where I’ll be sitting somewhere to write and shipping on tuesday..
every week is my commitment and we’ll see where it goes.

if you want to buy me a drink, feel free to sign up as a paid supporter. but if not no worries, not hurt, this monday night long forms will be free as long as i can keep it that way.

I’ve got a story and good news I’m looking forward to sharing on the next one.

p.s. knicks in four baby.