So I'm learning what it's like to not own a car. I'm also learning how to care for a dog while living in a small apartment with no yard. Oh, and my wife and kids are now 1500+ miles and a two-and-a-half-day drive away from where I live. It's been exactly one week since Clara the Dog and I moved into an apartment in Brooklyn, NY.
Anne and I have been super quiet about all this, but nearly 18 months ago we decided to uproot our family and move to New York City. It's been something I'd considered since my time in college; Anne and I have been talking about It for nearly 10 years.
A number of factors finally broke surface tension of actually committing to the move: I felt like my work and creative growth had plateaued; Oklahoma is 50th in the nation in teacher pay and the public education system – short of a few bright spots – is a hot mess; The world is a big place with lots of ideas and dIfferent kinds of people. Anne and I feel like we need to make sure our two kids know and experience that first hand.
GOOD GRIEF it’s been a hard few weeks and months thanks to all the pressures, excitement, and anxieties riding shotgun with a cross-country move – not to mention doing all this with two small children and no steady jobs lined up.
The cost of just about everything here in NYC is quite the cold shower from how inexpensive it is to live in Oklahoma. I’ll still be freelancing and thankfully I’ve got some work already lined up. Anne is planning to take a semester off from teaching to help settle into a new city with a young family. We’ve got a bit of a financial runway after selling our house in Oklahoma City as well as both our cars, but we’ll get to the end of that soon enough.
Anne is a teacher and she's staying with the boys in Oklahoma City till the end of the year to finish out the fall school semester. The next month-and-a-half are an opportunity for me to hit the ground running here in New York to develop the relationships needed as a freelancer. Clara the Dog and I'll make the two-and-a-half day drive back to OKC for Christmas and we'll all come back afterward as a full family to our new home – crazy...