Moving from Seattle to New York Review

I went down to the kitchen. It smelled of basement and old food. I turned the stove on to cook pasta; this is the first time I cooked pasta in New York City. It is Sunday, September 7th, 2025. About a month ago, I saw a Handshake message from a recruiter at a charter school in New York, recommending I apply for a teaching position. I noticed this was not the first message from the recruiter and from my corporate office in Seattle where I was working a contract role, I decided to respond to the message. I expressed interest in the position. It felt like the time to jump. For about four years, I had been whining about Seattle. I had been rained on, spat at, yelled at, threatened. I’d fallen in love, fallen out of love, been broken hearted (don’t know that I ever broke anybody’s heart). I’d stopped going to classes for a quarter because I didn’t want to get out of bed. I’d drank twisted tea mid-day and done sit-ups in my underwear on a small yoga mat in a small living room. I’d lived poorly; I’d lived well. Whoever I was in the city of Seattle is gone now. If I’d heard that concept last October, if I’d known that life continued after my character left Seattle, I’d be ecstatic. For the last of my four years in Seattle, I spent half my time feeling truly, unimaginably terrible. A kind of terrible that I thought could not be described. My heart was always racing, my last thoughts in bed involved a future that was so deeply, overwhelmingly negative that I realized could soon be a reality.

I will not be able to survive on my own. I will not be able to do anything worthwhile. I will die, and perhaps I have already.

I am still alive, Preston. It is almost a year later, and you now live in New York, just like you’ve always wanted to. Two nights ago, you walked past CBGB, but it was closed down. Not even the ghosts of that reality remain. You walked past Washington Square Park, remember how much you love Washington Square Park? You spent much of a day in Central Park; you walked around so much of Central Park! You walked past Grand Central Station; you live in New York! Do you remember when that was all you wanted?

Once I get here, I’ll be good. Once I get there, I’ll be good.

You’re finally there, how does it feel?

I like to think I’m not alone in the trap of ambitions. I doubt I’m the first to point out the importance of the word pursuit in the phrase “pursuit of happiness.” Camus touched on this with The Myth of Sisyphus. You must believe that you will reach the top of the mountain at some point, otherwise what’s the point in climbing? I doubt I’m the first to notice that I need to need. I need to want. I need to live with a next image, or a past one, something to either get to or get away from. I can’t contend with reality. What did I see when I thought of New York? I saw myself in a small, grimy bar, playing the acoustic guitar with a focused crowd all begging to sign me. To a label. Or I saw myself in front of and behind the spotlight of a small theater, putting on a play to an attentive audience about whatever I was upset about in the moment. I’m not upset about much outside of myself anymore. Over the past year every art piece I’ve made that I haven’t shown to the world has been so deeply me-centered that I worry I literally cannot think outside of myself. I’m a selfish American. I’m a lazy, lost, scared selfish American. And I’ve had a couple friends say to me that at one point they woke up and realized that their main goals in life were to experience relationships. Not even necessarily romantic relationships. To connect with someone, form a bond, and not break that bond or let it fall by the wayside. I never woke up to this. I know what I’m leaving behind and I still leave it. I still left you all. I’m sorry. There were times in the past year that I thought, if I could just push through the temporary pain I knew I was experiencing, then I could become someone new in Seattle. I did, but I still had to leave. I still had to know that it would hurt to leave. That I left so much of myself in Seattle, that he’s gone, and that life is not like a chapter book. I did not step on the flight to New York and refresh. All my experiences were still settled within me. All the memories I wanted to forget were still there when I watched us fly over the mountains. And I had the thought

This may be the last time.

And I started thinking that I like The Rolling Stones. And I started remembering my brother playing an early record of theirs, and us both agreeing we liked it for how old it was. And I started remembering my father playing Sticky Fingers for the thousandth time while I ate dinner with him in high school. And I remembered running to “Under My Thumb” on a treadmill in college while being heartbroken. And then all the sudden I was still in the air. I was still on a plane to New York, and I had no one to blame for that but myself. No one to point to, no one to laugh with. I was on a plane to New York, because I got restless, and you’re supposed to be restless when you’re young. You can follow impulse when you’re young. You can be wrong. You can learn that you’re wrong and you’ll continue to be wrong, but I just knew that already. I just knew that when I was looking at those mountains I passed over, they would be there long after my loved ones and I could no longer listen to The Rolling Stones. I already know that I don’t know. What else is there to know?

But you make decisions. I make decisions. I watch the clock tick and I make decisions. And I sit in them. And one day I’m gonna wake up and realize all that ever mattered were the people in front of me. And by then they’ll be gone.

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