Curses and Blessings: Moving from Boston to NYC

In 1920, George Herman “Babe” Ruth moved from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees. The switch defined the iconic rivalry between the two cities. And here I am, following the trail of The Great Bambino more than one hundred years later.

Boston, you’re my home. Now, like the Babe, I, too, am a New Yorker.

Where to live

It started because I wondered: if I could live anywhere, where would it be?

Where we live permeates and influences everything about our lives. Yet often, we live somewhere chosen for us instead of chosen by us.

So, I set out to determine where I wanted to live. And the question proved difficult. After all, the world is gigantic, full of every type of place imaginable.

How to narrow it down and figure out where to be?

What’s in a place

Why live somewhere? I asked myself and brainstormed the answers. Here’s the list I came up with:

• The people are ones I’d want to be.
  • Be around, but also I’d want to become them.
• I love spending time in the environment.
• It enables and accelerates what I want.
  • The opposite for what I don’t.
• I can be part of, and contribute to, the community.
• When it whispers to me, I love what I hear.
• It’s easy to gather with Good People who don’t live there.
• I’m able to go to other places from it.
• The values of the place are in harmony with mine.
• Good climate.

In summary, it’s about what that environment facilitates. What you hear and feel from the place itself.

Furthermore, just as difficult is deciding what you want. I’ve spent energy figuring that out. Here is my focus:

• Developing my health and well-being.
• Communicating stories.
• Growing myself.
• Building community.
• Creating value.
• Loving life.

This is what works for me now. What are your lists?

Then, I brainstormed possible fits after discovering what I wanted from where I lived. I had a list of places like Mumbai, Vienna, and Anchorage. Places like Denver, Austin, San Diego, the Southern Gulf Coast, and where I already was in Boston. I even considered going full digital nomad.

But New York City shone through.

So why NYC?

NYC is where things get done. I can plop myself down and be carried by the wave and energy around me.

I’m in a season of doing. I’m building things, creating, and making my contribution. I heard somewhere to think of your career in thirds of about 15 years – first planting seeds, second working the crop, and third harvesting. While I’m still planting many seeds, I’m preparing to work on what I’ve sown.

For example, I’m working on storytelling, experiences, and crypto. When I was looking at places, one of the people showing me around was a writer into crypto. Separately, after walking a friend to work, I passed multiple experience businesses. Then I attended a breakfast where half the people I talked to worked at different blockchain companies.

Second, people and relationships are important to me. The best thing I do is connect with others. It’s why I began writing, to share. I want to serve, and the things we can do together are immense compared to what we may do alone.

The community of NYC is unlike any other. People who come together from so many places and ways of life. I walk outside and hear more languages daily in NYC than in my whole life elsewhere. And meeting new people and connecting is a way of life.

Lastly, when people think of New York City, they think of the glitz, the lights, and the money. But that’s not what I hear or feel in the city. I see a world of people pursuing their dreams, going after their lives and destiny. As unique dreams as you’ll find anywhere. Yet everyone is after the same thing, what matters to them.

If America is the land of opportunity, NYC is opportunity’s mecca.

The dark side of Gotham

Then again, NYC is known more for smelling like trash than roses. But I’m allured by that too.

Can I face the hardships of the city? The mass of people pressing in and stepping over and pushing by. Be stampeded in Times Square and have a trillion tourists block my way. Be mugged and beaten and have all my money taken. Then kicked again and again while already down. Can I take the heaviest punches life can throw?

I was overwhelmed looking for a place. The city operates on a just-in-time move-in cycle. My mind spent an evening convincing me I could find a nice bench to live on because no landlord would accept me as a tenant or there were no suitable places in my budget in all of NYC. I’ve fought to sleep, kept awake by fear that I won’t be able to make it, stewing that I’ve made a terrible mistake.

NYC is expensive, crowded, and everything is happening all at once all the time.

New York City is all of that. Yet what are challenges but opportunities?

At my bloodiest and most beaten, can I smile, choose to go on, love life, and find joy?

The only way to know is to experience it. So here I am, ready to have at it.

In Thoreau’s day, one could go to the woods. Face the elements and discover what it takes to survive. But gone is the wilderness, the huts, and the space. Today we are the wild, and it’s facing a mass of people instead of solitude.

Because enlightenment is not found in the monastery but in the marketplace. It’s easy to be peaceful and serene during meditation, and you practice there to take it off the cushion and into life. In the chaos of millions of people, that’s where you discover where and who you are.

So, “I went to (NYC) because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Hard to Leave

It’s hard to leave a home you love. But when you love something, sometimes you have to let go.

I came to Boston for an education, sports fanaticism, history, and family ties. Mostly because I loved the Red Sox.

Boston gave me more than I imagined.

There’s a toughness to Boston. It manifests as people who trudge through blizzards to get things done and run marathons on inclement April mornings.

That may be why many successful folks – comedians, writers, businesspeople, athletes – have Boston ties. Boston punches well above its weight, a world-class training ground in an overgrown village.

Bostonians are passionate and fiercely loyal. They care to a fault. Massholes shock visitors not used to their ‘we’re about something and screw you if you’re in the way of it’ and Boston-against-the-world mentality. It’s born because they believe in Boston.

Perhaps this comes from generations-deep roots, a rarity in an increasingly transient world.

And when you are in, when you’re accepted as a Bostonian, not an easy feat as anyone who has tried to assimilate will tell you, you’re one of them. Welcome to the team. My people came out repeatedly as I said goodbye, and I left an enormous part of my life there.

Boston has elite education, healthcare, history, seafood, and passion for their sports teams. I loved and benefitted from all of them. The place grew me up, nurtured me, and cared for me so successfully that I had to leave to show and apply what it taught.

Having cherished my time in Boston and benefitted from all it had to offer, I said goodbye, bringing with me its lessons, and determined to apply them in the next phase of life.

Boston to NYC

These two excellent cities have long sparred with each other. Boston was a hotbed of revolutionary activity during the American Revolution, while New York stayed loyal to the British crown.

This rivalry is fueled by their shared histories and differences in culture, sports teams, and regional identities. New England’s Puritan roots and New York City’s Dutch heritage created competitive neighbors.

Boston hates New York, and New York says they don’t even think about Boston.

Yet few places have more crossover. Travel between the two is simple, many people have family and friends in the other, and quite a few have lived in both places. It’s a friendly rivalry that makes both better.

So I moved to NYC for the opportunity, community, and aliveness. A chance to discover my mettle. And partly because I can’t imagine if I hadn’t decided to come to Boston so long ago.

The Babe cursed Boston for 86 years when he moved to NYC. I hope I’ve left on better terms.

I’ve cheered and cried and bled for Boston. I gave it love and always will. And I want it to grow and thrive. I worked for it and the people there, and I want them to succeed to new heights.

Call it the Blessing of the Boots-bino. And I hope it lasts even longer than 86 years.

Because somewhere in a small place, unnoticeable among New York City’s lights, a New Yorker is cheering for Boston.