The Goodbyes of New York
When you live in New York for a couple of years and not all of your friends are native born New Yorkers, you might notice that you seem to be invited to more farewell parties than you had before you came here. New York is a transit city, so I present you The Goodbyes of New York…
People come to New York to make it. And after a while they make up the balance. If they made it, they know they can afford to live in a nice place, grow the kids and enjoy life. Or, they see they haven’t and they know they can’t keep on living in a city with such an obscene rent. That ends in the many goodbyes of New York.
Some go back to where they came from as they can’t get used to the craziness of the city. Many people come at the end of their visa and must leave us. Good friends fall in love with people in other locations, and have to choose between career, city and the new love. People get promoted and are moving to other cities on this planet. Colleagues accept jobs in other regions. Another friend drops her career and is ready to write that book she has been telling about so long.
The goodbyes of New York – moving on
Every time, the social network we have built here, changes. Again and again. I miss you all; you know who you are. The new faces we encounter, enrich us. But they don’t replace the ones that turned their back on NY, permanently or for an undefined time.
No idea if I too have an expiration date for the city. It might be soon, it might be never. I hope it not to be too close to today: I feel very at home in the city and consider it my home base for now. And when I talk to those who left us here, I hear one thing over and over again from most of them: they’ll be back. To live here or to visit.
Fortunately, I see friends who find their way here. They became New Yorkers, not visitors. We call New York HOME.
Koen Blanquart is a strategy consultant, journalist, and author.
Wanderlust is one of his driving factors, and he shares his travels here on Boarding Today. Koen is also the skipper of SV Bagabonda, a sailing vessel making a slow circumvention of the globe..
Koen recently published a book on how to manage a remote team: The Suitcase Office.
I like your article, Thank you
i like this post
what are the differences between New York and another US city?
Max, the cost of living makes that people have very little savings. And that makes the decision to leave once conditions change, way faster. Cities with similar costs of living (San Francisco for example) see a similar pattern.