I loved NYC but I had to leave; Now live happily in a small town of Tenessee

I am a third generation New York proud, and I never imagined leaving the city where everything seemed to happen.

After all, where can I survive as a multi-hyphenate playwright, performer and chess teacher?

Whenever my friends moved from the city, I would secretly make fun of and label their choice while enjoying being made of more difficult things.

However, when the COVVI-19 pandemic closed schools and theaters, I could not pay my bills. At 38, I found myself unemployed and homeless.

Desperate, I applied to an artists’ residence on a donkey farm in a small town in Rural Tennessee. I got it and my plan was to save money, write my game, then go home to New York in a few months.

However, I fell in love with my little town and I completely upset my life to stay here with my husband and my daughter. We are still happy here three years later.

I appreciate access to the outdoors but appreciates my proximity to the flourishing cultural scene of Nashville

Our cost of living is much lower here than it has ever been in New York, which was a huge advantage.

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My family lives in an off -network cabin, where my husband and I keep hectares of land for our owners in exchange for a reduction in rent. This helps us spend more time outside, in addition to taking care of our garden is a fun and economical activity for the whole family.

I appreciate the independence and freedom that our proximity to the great outdoors gives to our daughter, but as I get older, I want to share parts of my culture that my mother made with my sister and I in New York: to visit museums, bookstores, concerts and theaters.

Fortunately, we live less than two hours from Nashville, and its major artistic scene and its offers from big cities give me peace of mind and are fun to dive when I miss the house.

I realized that I prefer to live in a smaller place with less choice instead of a large one with too much. I do not miss the intrusive and constant bombardment of digital advertisements on everything, from vehicles in motion to bus stops, either.

Here, I feel less fatigue and decision stimulation, which gives me more cognitive power to be present with my family and build my artistic career.

We have also drawn the best of the disadvantages of living here

Some parts of life in a more distant small town have been difficult to adapt.

We cannot have a pizza delivered to our cabin in the woods. However, on the positive side, I discovered that I like to cook, just like my daughter.

I bored to live in a city accessible on foot, but I learned to drive. We do not have a lot of activities adapted to children nearby – most gymnastics, music and art lessons are 40 minutes by car from us – but we have a lot of space to create pleasure. My husband built a giant wooden obstacle course for our daughter in our spacious courtyard.

Finding good work opportunities locally was particularly difficult, but that only made me create mine. A little over a year ago, I opened a company containing subsidies and started writing independent stories.

Every day, I “do now” my husband, my husband built a few steps from our cabin. No trains or bus in sight.

I am grateful that we have jumped out of our comfort zone to take such a big step

I often lack easy access without hindrance to live music, comedy shows, museums, theater, restaurants and dance lessons in New York.

However, every day here is filled with its own adventures – handling bell snakes, slaughtering trees that fall, saving dogs, creating irrigation projects for excess rain.

Although I doubt that I would have made this change if the pandemic had not forced me to a difficult position, I am happy to have adopted this new chapter.

This allowed me to continue growing and taught me about what really matters: spending time surrounded by people I love and creating art in a natural setting.

I’m sure some New Yorkers reading this will think I I cannot hack it “in the city – and they are right! However, I now see that the secret to living a more complete life was just outside my comfort zone.

I am grateful for my stay in the city, but I gladly take the mornings sitting on our top of the hill while looking at the sunrise on those spent fighting for a seat on the “R” train.