Ask Casey #3: Making Moves

Dear Copy Casey,

I'm at a double crossroads, and if you only want to address one of them, that's cool. I've been thinking about moving to a new state/place for a hot minute but am hesitant for a number of reasons. In the past, I've had no problem picking up and going, but I'm older now (36), have a dog (no partner or child or anything lol), and for the first time in my adult life... stuff like furniture and art that friends made for me, etc. I've been in Austin, TX for four years. I moved here leap year of 2020 LOL. I was able to make friends and build community pretty fast by booking shows (when we started doing stuff again) and being friends with a few known members of the music community. I built a career as a band/artist manager here—I do that and write copy mostly for music tech companies to pay the bills. I rent an incredible little house in a great neighborhood a 5-15-min drive from most of my friends for a reasonable cost (I got very lucky).

HOWEVER, you know, it's Texas with Texas laws, and I'm pretty terrified of what it'll look like after the election, even though I'm in the Austin bubble and am a white lady. Nature is very important to me but getting to it is frustrating with the traffic and parking...the rumors are true lol: the city is outgrowing itself fast. Also, dating has been awful and I really don't see it getting any better. So many Peter Pans. OH AND THE SUMMERS. I'm actually in Upstate NY right now, escaping the heat. Last con of Austin is that I experience extreme fatigue often I haven't been able to figure out with doctors but that I haven't experienced since leaving. I REALLY hope it's because I'm bored and not mold or something.

The primary alternative is here: the Hudson Valley in NY, most likely. Mostly for the nature, being able to practically roll out of bed into swimmable water or at least drive through nature instead of traffic to get to it. And there are no crowds when you arrive! Also for the access to the city. Every time I'm in NYC, it's good for my music management career and I feel like if I'm going to do this for real, I need to spend more time in either NYC or LA. I'd see myself going in for a couple of days at least 1x/month. And I don't have the money to be flying there all the time, getting a dog sitter, etc. The cons are: the politics aren't that much better here (in the country), winters are terrifying (I'd prob drive to FL where my fam is or TX), and you know, it's small town life where everyone knows each other, and I'm not sure the dating would be much better.

Ok....so do I stay put, move to Upstate, or curve ball: move to LA (as I originally planned when I moved to Austin, but I don't think I could afford it)?

The other crossroad, which is related, is about work and money but I feel like I've already typed/shared a lot, so I'm going to stop here.

Peace and puppies,

Single Mid-30s Lady Confused about Where to Live

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Dear Single Mid-30s Lady Confused about Where to Live,

Have you ever thought about your death? Not in a morbid/obsessive way, but like, in a thoughtful way?

I’ll rephrase: if what they say is true, and your life flashes on the projector screen of your mind as you croak, what kind of movie do you want to watch?

Forgive me for starting with death, my friend. I had wanted to open the letter with a saucy Copy Casey story, but your letter wouldn’t let me. You wrote me a mostly painless, open, generous letter, and yet, it sent me into a deliberative spiral. Maybe it’s because I recently completed a cross-country move of my own. Maybe it’s because I feel a kinship with you. Maybe it’s because I never know what to tell people who ask me questions I’m currently asking myself.

So, anyway, you’re going to die. So am I! We’ll both end up partying in Hell with the sodomites and the Twitter users, but before then, we get to live on a blue marble covered with puppies, pastries, and potential lovers. It’s one of those cliches that’s achingly true: our time on Earth is precious. I’m of the mind that we should “do stuff for the plot.” The plot is all we have. It’s plot, and then we die.

It’s our mission while Earthbound to love as many people and collect as many stories as possible. I like that our culture is moving towards hedonism in the realms of relationships and personal narratives. Yes, take the crazy job! Yes, join the throuple! Yes, drive your proverbial car off the proverbial cliff and belt out Chappell Roan as you and your proverbial automobile smash into the warm, proverbial ocean!

That is all to say, I think you should move. Your letter makes it sound as though you want to but have yet to give yourself the permission. I think the Hudson Valley would be perfect for you.

(Also, since you asked explicitly, I will answer explicitly: please don’t move to LA. You mention disliking traffic and wanting to return to more mild seasons. LA is wrong for you on all fronts. Sure, LA is awesome for some people, but it doesn’t sound, at least to my ears, like you are one of those people.)

Now, for the first few weeks of pondering your letter, I thought I would tell you to stay in Texas. Your living situation in Austin sounds lovely! I envy you and your car and your pals and your warm weather. I wanted to spend my letter telling you to practice gratitude for what you already have and not to make your life harder by moving. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to write that letter. It wouldn’t come out, probably because it wasn’t honest. After a night of mulling over your question before bed, I decided to read your letter again and pretend like I was experiencing it for the first time. The truth came screeching through like a subway train: you are not asking me whether or not you should move. You are, in a way, asking how to break your own heart.

That may sound like I’m psychoanalyzing you, which I’m not qualified to do, but follow me for a second. Yes, your life in Austin reads as fabulous. Even with the dating struggles and semi-chronic fatigue (two not insignificant considerations), you have nice furniture and real community and consistent income. On paper, you are a lucky duck. On paper, you’d be an idiot to leave.

But, of course, we don’t live our lives on paper, do we? We live our lives in the realm of laughing greedily, gobbling delicious food, and dancing in sticky sneakers to a well-made playlist. We live in the world of hot flesh and vegan doughnuts. We live in the world of rewriting our own story over and over again, and it sounds like you want to pen your next chapter in Upstate New York. So why am I telling you that you’re going to have to break your own heart?

If your moving considerations are anything like mine were, you are going to have to tell your precious inner selves that you’re taking their palace of safety (your home in Austin) and catapulting them into a new living space.

There’s a gremlin inside of you that loves your “incredible little house.” If you move, she’s going to be pissed.

There’s a gremlin inside of you that loves that one cafe. She’s going to be bereft.

There’s a gremlin inside of you that loves your friends in Austin. She’s going to get nostalgic, and it won’t be the pretty kind of nostalgia. It’ll be the nostalgia that seizes your chest on the Metro North train into Grand Central, rendering you unable to breathe for two full seconds while the enormity of the change you’ve made swallows you. It will actually be Grief—deep, purple, mossy—in cosplay as nostalgia.

But, my iconic Single Mid-30s Lady Confused about Where to Live, on the other side of that train ride is your life. Your splendid, forward-moving, breezy-evenings-in-the-summer life. Sure, you can work in music anywhere, but it sounds like you want to do it in New York. Sure, winters in the Hudson Valley are no cakewalk, but it sounds like you miss feeling the seasons change in your bones and slowing as the earth does.

And to your point about dating—because I don’t want to bullshit you—dating is hard almost everywhere. I get the sense you know this. That is perhaps for another letter, but I will say quickly: my charge to you (move or no move) is to populate your life with as many kickass people as possible, platonically and romantically. I hope you take as many sweaty lovers as your body roils you to take, whether that’s one lucky person or fifteen simultaneous sluts. This requires kissing some frogs, but hey, some frogs know how to fuck.

So, back to your/our death, my friend. When you die a very long time from now, I want you to meet the biblically accurate angel at the door of the Infernal Applebees and look them in their many eyes and say, “Oh, and when I moved to the Hudson Valley, I got this adorable little place, my dogs were just obsessed with it, we would go on these long hikes in May, by that one waterfall, and then, I joined with this Dungeons & Dragons group, and that’s where I met my new friend Louise, she got me into this weird kind of hot yoga, and oh, this one time, when I was down in the city for business and met my friend Nazia in Morningside Heights for a concert…” and so on.

Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Look at your life. It hasn’t even happened yet, and I’m blushing.

Now, to briefly contradict everything I just said, if you ultimately choose not to move, I trust that you will make that choice with all the pertinent information necessary. If that ends up being the case, I need you to squeeze every ounce of juice out of Austin. Make a bunch of dumb choices and live to tell the tale. Date a bunch of Peter Pans and be their naughty Wendy Darling. Wherever you choose to go, I hope a part of you never grows up.

So, move. Or don’t. I think you should because I think you think you should.

Promise me, either way, that you’ll live with an ass full of lit firecrackers.

Thanks for keeping me up at night with your letter, my friend. Give those doggies a treat for me.

Always,

Casey

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