A few weeks ago I asked (on my IG stories) what kinds of stories and topics you were interested in reading about on Vitamin b. I was surprised by how many of you wanted to know more about why I moved from San Francisco to New York—and if living here for the past three years has been everything I hoped and expected. So here it is! Why I moved across the country and what I learned along the way.
The Background
I moved to San Francisco about a year after I graduated. After four years of New England winters, this Florida girl was really craving warmer weather and more sun-filled days. I had visited SF a few times in high school for school trips and there was just something about California that felt very “me.”
At the time, May 2013 to be exact, I was working for a global travel company and after spending nine months traveling—from the Dominican Republic to Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bali, Washington D.C., Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, and San Diego (!) — I was ready for some more stability. And a closet.
Mainly though I couldn’t stop thinking about salsa. I had taken some dance classes here and there since graduating from college, but with all the moving around it was really hard to get in the groove of a regular training schedule. Traveling, exploring new places, living abroad — those were and still are super important to me because I believe those sorts of experiences help us learn about ourselves and grow in ways that staying in one place and around the same people just can’t do. But I could feel this dance dream calling me and I knew I had to follow it. So I found a sublet in San Francisco through a friend of a friend and booked a one-way ticket. Four hours after I touched down at SFO and unpacked my single suitcase, I went to audition for a dance team.
My Life in San Francisco
I loved living in San Francisco. I had a great job, incredible co-workers, a perfect 20-minute walk to work, an under market apartment with bay windows in every room, a roof deck, and a garage. Take away the fact that I couldn’t quite afford my life in my early twenties (a fact I ignored for pretty much the entire time I lived there — a topic for another post) and my life in SF felt pretty perfect.
But as I got more serious about dancing and started attending congresses and festivals to train and compete, the SF salsa scene that had welcomed me and given me a really solid foundation in Latin dance started to feel a bit small. In the summer of 2014, I took — err more like invited myself to tag along on — my first dance trip to New York. I danced as much as possible that week, taking private lessons during the day, group classes at night, and social dancing in the evening. Even so, there were still so many classes and socials I didn’t have time to go to so I started to think about spending the following summer there. It would be like the French language program I’d done in high school — three months to immerse myself in the dance world and soak up as much as I possibly could.
At the time I was still working for that global travel company and in addition to being open to people working from different locations for extended periods of time, the organization really supported its employees pursuing passions and growth outside of their professional life. My entire marketing team knew how much I loved salsa and I was pretty sure that when I broached the subject of a remote summer in New York my boss would be on board. He was! And that’s how I ended up living in a seven-story walk-up in Chinatown and social dancing every single weekend during summer 2015.*
*Here’s the part where I want to pause the story to say that that summer I was SO overwhelmed and lost in class and at socials. I struggled to keep up with combos. I couldn’t follow turn patterns. Everything felt so hard, so advanced, and I felt like I would never be as good as the dancers around me. So if you come to New York and feel super frustrated and like you can’t possibly ever be a good enough, please know that we all feel that way in the beginning. I promise you that you will as long as you just keep going, you will eventually *~magically~* get to where you want to be.
Making The Decision To Move Across the Country
Like all the big decisions I’ve made in my life — moving from SF to NYC, quitting my job, ending different romantic relationships — the right answer became apparent both all at once and over a very long stretched out period of time.
A few weeks into the summer, my dance coach told me I should move to New York. At the time, I didn’t take her seriously; a true New Yorker, her love for the city runs deep and during the year and a half we’d been working together I’d heard her tell many, many people they should move to the city that never sleeps. However, as the summer progressed I started to think about the idea of moving more seriously. There were a lot of dance opportunities and I could already see the progress I was making by taking advantage of them.
But I felt like moving to New York would mean sacrificing everything else in my life except dance. There were so many things I didn’t like about the city: the lack of sunlight, the long commutes from borough to borough, the harsh winters, all of the trash, the general dirtiness. In comparison, I found San Francisco’s design and architecture beautiful and I loved being able to drive a short few miles across the Golden Gate Bridge or down Route 101 to walk along the beach or along California’s cliffs.
I wasn’t scared about leaving behind my really good friends in SF or that incredible apartment. I knew my friendships would last, that I’d make new connections and find a new — albeit likely much smaller — apartment. What I feared more was that living in New York itself would make me miserable. That the city’s energy would deplete me and that the geography and logistics of living here would prevent me from creating a routine of work and dance and free time that sparked joy. I had friends in SF who commuted an hour and a half each way to the South Bay. I saw how exhausted and cranky it made them. I didn’t want that to be me.
Moreover, if you know me in real life or follow me on Instagram then you know how important spending time outside in the sun is to me and the immense energetic joy it brings me. I thought it would be hard for me to be happy in New York without that.
All summer I went back in forth and forth in my head:
Am I willing to be miserable, to be a less happy version of myself every day, to pursue my dream?
Is that what pursuing your dream takes?
I want to dance. Like I really, really want to dance. I know I do.
But am I willing to give up everything else for it?
The Moment I Knew
It was a Wednesday night in August. I was taking an Afro-Cuban class at Alvin Ailey in one of those studios with the huge windows. I remember looking out the window just as the sun was starting to turn that beautiful blue pre-sunset color and at that moment I just knew: I had to move.
Suddenly this decision I had been struggling with for weeks was no longer a question in my mind. The doubt and fear and uncertainty I had felt all summer disappeared. Most notably, it no longer felt like I would be giving up anything by moving to New York. I was no longer scared that I wouldn’t be happy living here. I knew I would be. I felt sure of it.
Now, whenever I get anxious about a big decision, I take a deep breath and remind myself of how clear this moment felt to me.
I’ve learned that with enough time, the right answer always reveals itself.
Sometimes it takes days. Sometimes it takes weeks or months or even years. But eventually, something inside your soul intrinsically knows what to do. When it no longer feels like a choice I’m making. When it feels like it’s the only thing to do, that’s when I know it’s the right decision.
The Move Itself
When I got back to San Francisco in September I brought up the idea of moving to New York with my boss. I was pretty sure he and the company would be supportive of my decision and find a way to make working remotely possible, but I was also ready to walk away and find a new job if they said no.
They said yes! And I got to work creating systems and structures to ensure I would be a successful remote manager for my team. Then in December 2015, I competed at the World Latin Dance Cup (we took 2nd place!), flew back to SF, packed up my Mini Cooper with as much stuff as possible, and drove the 13 hours from San Francisco to Seattle where my dad and sister live. I spent the Christmas holiday with them and then took a red-eye to New York on New Year’s Eve.
I wanted to kick off the new year in my new city and even though the flight itself was not as magical as I hoped it might be (in case you’re wondering, sadly they do not pass out champagne on a New Year’s Eve flight and there’s no collective countdown to midnight), there was something magical about dragging my two suitcases through the almost-empty streets of Manhattan on the first day of 2016. Three years later, I still love that my New York Anniversary falls on the beginning of a new year.
I sublet a friend’s apartment for two weeks while I looked for a permanent place. 40 apartment and roommate meetings later I finally found a good fit. Slowly I shipped or brought back in suitcases the rest of my things, the books, mementos, and summer clothes, I had left in SF or Seattle. I never moved any furniture.
What I’ve Learned Living In New York City
I moved to New York for dance. Because I didn’t want to look back in 15 years and feel like I didn’t give my dream a real try. I’d love to be able to say that at the time I was so sure of myself that I knew I’d “make it in New York” and that I would find a dance partner and become a good enough dancer to turn pro one day, but honestly, I didn’t feel that way. I felt like there was still a very large chance
In that sense, I am SO GLAD I MOVED TO NEW YORK.
Will I live here forever? Did I fall in love with NYC the way I did with SF? Do I think this is the best city in the entire world and that now that I’ve lived here I couldn’t possibly live anywhere else?
No.
I don’t feel that way and I don’t think I’ll live here forever. Most of the time, I enjoy living here because I’ve been able to create a life filled with the people and experiences that make me happy — drinking really good coffee, catching up with close friends, writing, social dancing.
Then there are times when I love living in New York because it’s New York. I love the rush of energy I feel when I climb out of the subway and into Midtown Manhattan; the way you can buy a breakfast sandwich, shampoo, toilet paper, beer, and a shoe rack at a bodega at 1:00 AM; the salsa social dancing scene, which really is unlike the social scene in any other city in the world.
New York may not be “my city” in the way I felt San Francisco was, but living here has taught me life really is less about the place and more about who you are with, how you spend your time, and the overall energy you bring to your life.
Looking Back At The Transition
What I Would Do Differently
Looking back, those first two weeks in New York were really stressful: I worked full 8 hour days, visited 5 to 6 apartments in the evening, and then rehearsed later on at night. My first sublet was above Central Park and I ended up looking for an apartment in Brooklyn, close to where my dance studio was in a neighborhood called Flatbush. It took over an hour on the subway to get from one neighborhood to the other and even longer late at night when the trains don’t run as frequently. It was an exhausting couple of weeks!
It took about a month to find a permanent place and about two more weeks to get my new room set up (bed, sheets, towels, etc. I didn’t bring any of those things with me when I moved out here). I made it all work, and it’s definitely possible, but if I could go back and do it again I would try to structure the whole thing so I had a couple of weeks to look for an apartment and set up my life without working and dancing on top of it.
I also can’t underscore enough how much easier being able to work remotely made the entire moving process. While so much about my life changed during the move, in a lot of ways it felt like I was doing all of the same things (working and dancing) just in a new location. I didn’t have the added stress of finding a new job or of spending 40 – 50ish hours a week learning an entirely different set of responsibilities or getting to know the dynamics of a new office. If I had I’m sure the actual moving process would have felt more draining than it did and it would have been a more jarring transition.
Thanks so much for reading! I tried to answer all of your questions but if you’re curious about anything else, plese let me know in the comments!
And if you’ve made a big move or are thinking about one, I’d love to hear about it below!
Xx
Brielle