It's no longer a secret that my time in NYC is coming to an end... at least from a perspective of "home". Trust me, I'll be back! By the time the apartment is packed and my uncomfortable ass guides a fifteen foot cube truck back to Charlotte, NC, my wife and I will have put in five years and one month in the greatest city in which we've had the pleasure of living. With each passing day, I become more and more aware of my limited time here.
A lot of my friends and family have asked why we're leaving NYC for Charlotte if we love it here so much. To be honest, we're being pushed out. To live comfortably in NYC, you have to have a combined income of around a quarter million per year. I'm serious. You know how people talk about how the middle class is dwindling? It's true. Maybe a lot of America doesn't see it, but if you spend any significant amount of time in a larger city, you'll understand. Please don't misinterpret all of this and assume I'm one of those guys that went to Europe and then came back pretentious as fuck and telling all Americans how they don't anything about how to live properly. I know those people and they suck.
Without divulging too much information about our financial status, it basically boils down to this: either make enough money to have everything you want or sacrifice basic comforts for the chance to live in NYC. You want a big apartment? A nice neighborhood? A yard? A house or even a row house? Pony up the cash! I know what you're thinking: "But it's like that everywhere!" True, but I know I can find a place in Charlotte with twice as much space in an equally safe neighborhood with nicer amenities and a yard for half as much money. If I want to try to "save" money living in Brooklyn, I have to either move to a less safe neighborhood, reduce my already small apartment to something even smaller or move to another borough. And we've considered these options, well, maybe not the less safe neighborhood. We've explored Queens, but our friends there are telling us that rent is increasing each year there as well. The problem with that is the fact that raises don't even come close to keeping up with the increasing rent.
The cost of living continues to increase while the pay does not. It's that simple. Add to that getting fired and having to live under the constraints of what unemployment pays out, and we're fucked.
Every time I think about leaving, I get sad. But then I have to remind myself about all of the shit we have to do just to stay afloat here and it all makes sense. Most days I go through my routine which includes some light packing just so I'm not blind-sided all of a sudden two weeks before we leave with having to pack up the whole apartment. Some days it hits me. On those days, I just want to curl up on the couch and cry. But what a waste of a great moment that would be! On those days, I should be getting out and taking advantage of what will soon be the city I left behind. But I don't. Maybe because in my personal life, I'm horrible with time management. Maybe because this city, as much as I love it, is really shitty to me.
The "bad relationship" analogy could be made here, but that's just too cliche. So I'll go with this instead: NYC is my Julianna's Pizza (and, ironically, is the only place that can provide this pizza). I love Julianna's Pizza. But what if every time I went there, the price of the pizza increased and the servers sneezed in my face, farted next to my table, pushed me out of the way, had the cops harass me, pushed flyers into my hand, kicked me in the balls, mugged me, spat in my face, kicked my dog, stabbed me, shot me, poured a mixture of salt, lemon juice and piss on my wounds, you get the point. Now if all of that happened to me when I went to Julianna's, I would write a bad Yelp review, but it's not going to stop me from eating that delicious pizza. That's how I feel about NYC. So it's really just the healthiest option for me to leave. But as I said before, I'll be back. Because Julianna's has a policy that if you're just in town for a visit, they treat you better. The cost of the pizza is still pricey, but now I have more money to spend on it so it's not really a problem anymore.
Today I woke up to find out that both Kobe Bryant and the Golden State Warriors made history last night. Not only was it Kobe's last game, but he scored an unprecedented 60 points in his final NBA game, more than double any other player in NBA history. The Warriors won their final game of the season to put them at 73 wins total for the year, beating out the record set previously by the Chicago Bulls.
To see these amazing accomplishments, I could only look inward at what I had done with my time in NYC. I moved here to continue my pursuit as an actor. I did some things. Some I never expected I would do. Some were too little, too late. And all of it helped shape me as a person and an actor. But sometimes I feel that all I really accomplished here was a taste for great pizza.
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