Queens, here I come! My Manhattan apartment building is being converted to condos. Because I’m a market-rate tenant, my lease isn’t being renewed and there’s no inside deal to buy my place. This is the tough and ugly part of New York City real estate: landlords hold all the cards. I’ve looked around the Upper West Side, the neighborhood I’ve called home for 7 years, and found that I can get much more for my money someplace else. The Brooklyn brand has caused rental prices to skyrocket there far beyond the rental rates in my current neighborhood so I’m looking at Queens. I’ve lived there twice before and loved it. Prices have gone up there as well but not to the same tune as Manhattan and Brooklyn. It also has the benefit of tremendous transportation convenience, lots of amenities, and authentic community, three things that are important to me. Come April 30th, Phin and I will shove off on a new residential adventure. Here’s hoping the apartment karma gods are with us!
“Forgive the exile this sweet frenzy: I return to my beloved world, in love with the land where I was born.” -from To Puerto Rico (I Return) by Jose Gautier Benitez
Today, I’m heading back home to New York. While I’m glad and grateful for all that I learned here in California, I am giddy about being back home. I feel like it’s Christmas and that my home will be there, just as before, waiting for me with a happy welcome. I wasn’t born there, but it is the home I’ve chosen, and I think that makes it even more special. New York, I can’t wait to see you, and all my friends who call it home, too.
We all get stuck. But we don’t need to stay where we are. We can move, grow, extend, and transcend.
When life gets heavy, lighten the load by opening up. Your eyes, your heart, your time. Be willing to be surprised by what you find, and then be willing to act on what you learn.
Life can leave us with many questions. Are we in the right job? The right relationship? The right city? I’ve found the clearest way to figure out these big questions is to move away from what we know. When we create some distance, literally or figuratively, we can see things more clearly.
For over a year, I’ve wrestled with the idea of leaving New York to create a new home in a new city. I was very conflicted about the decision so I decided to get away. I decided to take a break from New York and be totally open to any answer that rises up. My escape to Los Angeles did something really amazing, and totally unexpected. By going to LA, I found my way back to New York as my definitive home. I answered the question of “Where should I live?” not by thinking about it, but by leaving it behind. I didn’t need to angst over the decision. I needed to let it go and give it the space to solve itself.
What a powerful lesson. What an incredible discovery. I let go, and the sky didn’t fall. The world didn’t come to an end. I didn’t break. I let go, and then everything fell into place.
In just a few short weeks, I realized I’ve been telling myself a story that’s not true. I always imagined that if my ancestors had gotten off the boat in New York Harbor and kept going west, I would have never left the state of California. It’s a catchy little line and totally untrue. LA has given me some downtime, a chance to get away from it all. Getting around here and finding my bearings is proving to be more difficult for me here than it is in New York. When I first moved to New York, from the moment I set foot in that city as a 22-year-old who knew absolutely no one, I felt right at home. It clicked for me. I found the beat immediately and just joined the flow. Not so in LA.
This doesn’t mean that I’m sorry I came here. It also doesn’t mean that I regret this experiment in any way. After all, experiments are just that. We have a theory. We test it. We examine the result. A number of my dear friends have left New York for good this summer. I will miss them terribly and it prompted those old thoughts of giving up New York, again. My theory was that perhaps I had stayed too long at the dance, as Joan Didion so perfectly and beautifully stated about her move from New York to LA. Maybe it was time to grow up and move on. To test that theory, I did a house swap to try out California, a place I’ve thought of making my home for many years. The result has surprised me as much as anyone: California has wonderful aspects and I love to visit, but it’s not meant to be my home.
When these thoughts first started to rise up last week, I thought I was being too judgmental. Perhaps I needed more time, more patience, more experience with this new life. And as I sat in my meditation every morning, I realized that my gut was right, as it always is. Sometimes I ignore it, and regret it.
There are many things to commend my temporary home. The weather here is mostly cool and dry. Because I’m at the beach, it’s often cloudy and that prompts my pensive writer brain. Because it’s not as easy to get around here as it is in New York, I’m spending a lot of time on my creative work at home, exactly what I wanted to do with this time. I am staying in a beautiful condo that’s in a walkable neighborhood while a pair of lovely people are taking exceptional care of my (very small) pad in New York City. I’m getting the chance to see friends here whom I don’t see often enough. Almost all of the people I’ve met here are lovely and kind.
I’d always been of the mind that a place is just a place, that I loved New York only for the people who are there and a part of my life. But that’s not true either. New York and I have had a love affair for 15 years now. It’s been an off and on relationship. We have had our rough patches and separations. Sometimes I want to punch it right in the face because it makes me so frustrated. Eventually I can’t take it anymore, throw a fit, and run out the door saying I’m heading for greener pastures. New York stoically stands its ground, confidently and calmly, and says, “Okay. Do whatever you want. You know where to find me.”
I leave New York, and then I come back. Over and over and over again. I miss its energy and the buckets of opportunity that are flowing through the streets. I’ve had 8 different homes there over the course of 15 years. I’m sure I’ll have many more. I’m in Manhattan now and know that eventually I’ll find a home in Brooklyn either when this lease is up or perhaps a year later. I’m also certain that the love of my life is roaming the streets there and he’s wondering what the hell is taking me so long to find him. (Believe me, man, I’m wondering the same exact thing!) I know my long-term multilayered career will find its groove there.
New York, give me your noise, your dirt, and all the crazies you can muster. Let me rise to the challenge and make me a better person in the process. You’ve taught me strength, courage, and perseverance. A diamond is made shiny by pressure and scrubbing. A pearl is created through a salve to ease irritation. A butterfly is born from a cocoon through the struggle and squirming of an imperfect being with great potential that is hidden from the eye. Those lessons are not lost on me. I’m glad you stood your ground and chose to evolve on your own terms, not mine. You taught me so much about me just by being who you are. You’re not meant to be a home to everyone, but you are certainly meant to be my home. I’ll see you soon, but in the meantime I am making the most of my 5 remaining weeks in the City of Angeles.
Now that I’ve been in my new apartment for almost two weeks, it’s beginning to feel like home. To this point, it’s felt like I’m in a hotel room that I’ll be leaving soon. I’ve had to learn new patterns around my neighborhood and inside my apartment. I didn’t realize how rooted I was in my old apartment. I wondered if I would ever feel at home in this new space. Would I ever settle in mentally and physically?
On Thursday night, I went to bed late after being out to dinner with friends. When I laid down in my bed, I let out a long sigh. I thought to myself, “It feels good to be home.” And then a huge smile found its way onto my face. Home. It had happened. Since Thursday night, I feel gitty every time I walk through my front door. While I have been busy putting everything in its place, this place has been busy transforming itself into more than just a box. It’s a sanctuary. It’s a place of creativity, peace, and joy.
When things are right in our homes, they are right in other areas of our lives, too. Feeling at home these last few days has helped me to see that everything is going to be okay – in my career and my personal life. Just as I’ve been transforming my home, my home has been transforming me. I’m standing taller. I feel like options for opportunity abound, and many of them begin with me just making a choice to reach for them.
Change is good. And change – real, lasting, good-for-you change – begins at home.
“I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.” ~ Life of Pi
The move is complete. I left my apartment of 3 and half years to move down the road to a new home. After my movers left, I went back over to my old place with Phin to return my keys. I went upstairs to have one last look around. I knew I hadn’t left anything material behind, but I wanted to just see it one more time in its original state.
When I moved in there, I had lost almost all of my belongings 6 days earlier due to a building fire. I was lucky to be alive and I knew it. I made my way into this sunny new home wearing simple closes and carrying a plastic bag and a friend’s borrowed air mattress. It seemed fitting that I take one last look around this place, empty, exactly the way I remember it being when I first arrived.
I twirled around in the sunlit space, pressed my cheek to the warm window, and drew a long, deep, grateful breath. Phin took a spin around the place, bobbed his head, and then headed for the door as if to say, “Okay, I’m ready.” I said a heartfelt, quiet thank you, and then left. The cycle was complete and whole, and so am I thanks to this place. It deserved a proper goodbye after all we’d been through together. We both earned it and needed it. Now it’s ready for a new story, and so am I. And so, I let go.
Home is such a complex word. At its simplest, it is some sort of structure that protects those who live within it. But there is so much more to it. Home is a feeling, a place where we are most comfortable, where we can truly be who we are without putting on airs and without shrinking away from our essence. It is a place where we can dream.
Today I am trading one home for another, letting go of a structure that has helped to protect me while I have gone about building a new life over the last 3 and a half years. It has been good to me. It has kept me safe. It has been a teacher to me. It has renewed my faith that from tough circumstances, beautiful things can and do arise if we keep at this game of life. As long as we don’t give up, a home will incubate the very best that is within us until we are ready to take that goodness someplace new.
“Despite the forecast, live like it’s Spring.” ~ Lilly Pulitzer
My apartment is now at the weird point when it feels like a home, but it no longer feels like my home. I packed all my belongings in boxes. I took my art down off the walls. I’m wiping the slate clean and beginning again. It’s so appropriate to make a move in the Spring, when everything in the natural world is blossoming and blooming, stretching its wings and slowly coming back to life after a long winter’s nap.
My friend, Cyndie, also pointed out that this week is a New Moon. In astronomy, the New Moon is the phase of the Moon when it lies closest to the Sun in the sky as seen from the Earth. I feel the light pouring into my own life this week, too. I hope this light, and the feeling of renewal, will continue to follow me from season to season.
“Leave the door open to the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.” ~ Rebecca Solnit
This is my delivery from Jugglebox, a green moving company that delivers and picks up reusable plastic crates, eliminating the need for those cardboard boxes that we so often hunt for when we’re making a move. And so it begins….the process of sorting, packing, and cleaning as I trade one home in for another. A new beginning.
In my current home, I healed after my apartment building fire. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and started all over again. I rebuilt my life, literally, one tiny piece at a time. I let go of past disappointments. I became stronger, bolder, and more courageous. I started Compass Yoga here. I started my consulting practice here. This was Phin’s first forever home.
It was a wonderful home for what I needed then. And now I need something new and different and fresh. The start of a new chapter needs a blank page. To create the next masterpiece, we need an empty canvas.
So it’s with so much gratitude and a tiny bit of sadness that I release the familiar in favor of what comes next. Whatever it is, I’m ready for it.
This powerful statement is one of the most incredible lessons I learned working with my therapist and coach, the amazing Brian. I used to think of settling as such a negative word, as if it meant we were somehow giving up or selling ourselves short by settling. Brian turned that around for me.
I learned this lesson in a big way yesterday when I secured my new apartment. Phin and I will be taking up residence at a new place in our neighborhood on April 15th. I wish I could have found a place that was a little bit cheaper, sans any broker fee (though they did give me a discounted fee), and a full one-bedroom. Still, the place is beautiful. I get to stay in my lovely Upper West Side neighborhood right across the street from the park. Because I’m sticking with my current management company, the paperwork was a lot less than it would have been otherwise (especially since I work for myself). It has all the conveniences of my current full-service building and is newly renovated. I will continue to enjoy my western facing view, can break my current lease without penalty, and won’t waste any time hunting for a new home on a tight timeline.
I settled. The new apartment isn’t perfect. I didn’t get every single thing I wanted, but it’s a wonderful fit. And that’s what settling is all about – doing the very best you can with what you’ve got.
Home is such a complex word. At its simplest, it is some sort of structure that protects those who live within it. But there is so much more to it. Home is a feeling, a place where we are most comfortable, where we can truly be who we are without putting on airs and without shrinking away from our essence. It is a place where we can dream.
Christa Avampato 