As many of you may, or may not know, July 2019 I fell in love with New York City. I quit my job in Communications and Marketing, with one of the largest and most well respected healthcare systems in Atlanta. I packed all of my belongings in four suitcases and moved to Brooklyn.
I spent the better part of October 2019- March 2020 in New York City living my best life. I was no Carrie Bradshaw, but I was happy in my four bedroom, ONE bath Brooklyn four story walk up. I was completely in love with my humble beginnings because I knew it was simply a starter apartment and I was bound to level up. I was blessed enough to have a job as a virtual Executive Assistant for an amazing social responsibility Communications and Marketing firm. I traveled, met dope people in entertainment, activism and much more. I was blessed beyond measure. Then COVID-19 shook the world.
March 13, 2020 I packed one small suitcase and flew home for, what I thought was going to be two weeks but ended up being 5 months. Fast forward to September 2020, I finally flew back to New York to be with my little apartment and back in the city I was happy to call home. I did not have a job and I was living off the savings I had from my salaried job I quit almost a year ago. I was thankful my past self had the discipline to save so aggressively.
I went back to New York to figure out what my next step in life was going to be. Could I find a job in one month to be able to resign a lease in Brooklyn in order to stay in New York or should I pack it up and move back to Atlanta?
Part of me would feel like a failure if I tucked my tail and moved back to Atlanta and the other part of me was actually excited to go back home. Ideally, I wanted to live in a nice apartment with lots of natural light for my many plants, oh and a little rescue pup.
Side note: It's sad that my dream is to be able to afford a nice apartment. Why is that a dream? The price of living is so expensive now, it's ridiculous. I digress.
I spent all of September, living my best life. I went to the beach, brunch, gym, networked, modeled, binged Girlfriends, applied for jobs-- occasionally and honestly went wherever the wind blew me. I had come to terms with moving back home and I was ok with it, in fact I was happy to go back home. Which was interesting because I didn't feel like I had spent enough time in New York to be over the city, and I wasn't. I was simply happy to go home.
October 29th, I touched back downing the ATL and I let out a gigantic sigh. Partially because the flight home was incredibly turbulent and mostly because I had finally made it back where I felt the most safe to begin the next portion of my journey.
It also occurred to me while my knuckles turned white from gripping the seat's armrests, that the turbulence of the plane was symbolic of where I am in life presently. It was bumpy in the beginning on the way up and somewhere in the middle it started to level out. However, once I started to get closer to my destination, to my goal, the journey started to get scary. So scary, I needed to pray for guidance and for a safe landing into my purpose. Things started to not make a lot of sense. When I finally got to where I had worked so hard to get, the rough journey seemed worth it all.
I am back in Atlanta now and still content with my decision to come home. Before leaving New York, I made up in my mind I was going to actively pursue a career in commercial modeling. The day I got to Atlanta, a brand reached out to me to shoot with them later in the week. The day of the shoot they offered me an ongoing gig to model with them every week for the foreseeable future. I'm going to do a blog post on speaking things in to existence.
I have continued to look for a full time position in Marketing, Communications or Social Media Management, but I am enjoying being a freelancer at the moment. I know doors with open for me the more I walk in my purpose and trust the journey.
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