Before I even started college, I knew I wanted to get a job in NYC after I graduated. I was going to school for journalism, after all. What better place to be than the busy city, full of big-name publishing companies and opportunities? Well, after seven years living that dream, I decided to graciously dip out. For a few reasons.
Let me start with this: New York City is an incredible place with endless options—that goes for everything from career paths to dating prospects to takeout. There is so much happening at every moment of the day; it’s impossible to get bored. Even better, most of my friends live there. At my most recent job, I worked in a beautiful high-rise building with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the Empire State Building. I recognize that a lot of people dream of doing what I was doing, and I do feel absurdly grateful, lucky, and proud of the time I spent working in New York.
The problem is that I was also starting to feel an increasing amount of anxiety and stress. Over time, I went from just being really busy and pretty tired most of the time to feeling completely burnt out. I loved my job and what I did every day there. But the daily grind that comes with NYC living—no matter what your job is—was really beating me down. My 45-60-minute commute felt more and more daunting each day. Leaving my apartment at 7 AM to make a workout class and getting home after 8 PM was draining me. All I ever wanted to do when I had time off was sleep or watch TV. Our apartment was in a constant state of disarray and I put off tiny tasks like making doctors appointments or dropping things off at the post office. Anything on top of what I was already juggling day-to-day felt too daunting to even consider.
I didn’t feel like the hustle was inspiring me to work harder and be better. I just felt like no matter how much I did or how packed my schedule was, I couldn’t get it all done (professionally, socially, and personally). I was exhausted yet still always felt like I was coming up short. There weren’t enough hours in the day—except, NYC tells you that if that’s the case, you should just push harder and work longer. Keep running on that hamster wheel, and you’ll get where you want to be eventually.
I probably would have just kept chugging away for a lot longer—my great job! My friends!—if it weren’t for my husband. Joe also lived in NYC for seven years, and would probably say it was seven years too long for him. But he unfortunately fell in love with someone who worked in publishing and had a job she loved so felt like it was necessary to stay.
So, OK, plenty of people don’t love NYC. But you’re probably wondering how we made the jump from “leave NYC” to “live in a motorhome.” Fair. A couple of years before we got married, we went to visit The Grand Canyon. We packed our tent and sleeping bags in our checked bags, rented a car at the Las Vegas airport, and drove to the park. We camped and hiked and soaked up every moment of it. We did the same thing the next year, this time at Yosemite National Park. And we started talking about how awesome it would be to just go out west for an extended period of time and get to see all the amazing things we want to see. Flying out to see one national park once a year was time consuming and expensive. It was inefficient—we didn’t even put a dent in the list of things we wanted to see at each destination, while we doled out a couple thousand dollars and burned up precious vacation days.
Long-term travel sounded awesome, but the reality was that we had good jobs in NYC, and it would be foolish to leave them. So we went back to life as we knew it. Over the next few years, as NYC continued to wear on us, we also talked more about this wild daydream. And then we decided to see how much we would need to save to make it happen—hypothetically, of course. And then we thought, well, it’s a good idea to save more money anyway to give us more options, so let’s just see how much we can save. And then, we decided to scale back our honeymoon and do something shorter and more low-key to save more…just in case. And then we started telling some people that we were toying with the idea of taking some off to travel out west. And then we started looking at RVs online, just for fun. And then suddenly we were quitting our jobs and buying a travel trailer and packing up our entire apartment and saying goodbye to our friends.
I’m saying “suddenly” because it feels like it happened so quickly, but it was about two years from the first time we said “what if” to the time that we gave notice at our jobs. We thought about it A LOT. (I’m going to dedicate a full post to that—how we realized that we just might be able to make this work.) This past October, I got hit by a car while crossing the street on my way to work. Thankfully, I’m OK now. But the whole fiasco made me think even more seriously about getting out of the city.
So here we are, a few days away from launch day. I’m working on freelance assignments—I feel very lucky that I can keep doing the part of my career that I truly enjoy (reporting and writing) and continue working with very talented editors. We’re checking the RV to make sure everything is working properly, and getting packed up. And you know what the weirdest part is? I’m not scared. I’m not regretting quitting my job, or leaving the known to jump headfirst into the unknown. For the first time in seven years, I don’t have a guaranteed biweekly paycheck, but my stress levels are lower than ever and I feel like I have the time to stop and breathe when I need to. I have the mental space to remember to respond to text messages or wish a friend happy birthday, and I don’t feel exhausted by the idea of making a simple phone call or running an errand. I have time to focus on work that I love and grow both personally and professionally. And right now, that makes me feel like I’m living the dream.
