How I moved to NYC with no job or friends and just a few boxes of books to my name

Tomorrow marks three years of living in New York City. I’m a big sucker for anniversaries. I like to reminisce. So, I make lists.

Tomorrow marks three years of living in New York City. I’m a big sucker for anniversaries. I like to reminisce. So, I make lists.

It baffles me to think who I was three years ago and how vastly different I am now thanks to this beautiful, challenging city. 

I thought now would be a good time as any to tell the story of how I moved to NYC without a job lined up, without knowing anyone in the city, without ever meeting my roommate or seeing my (tiny) apartment beforehand, and how my mom and I packed up everything I had into two suitcases and ten boxes we shipped all the way from Florida.

Why New York? 

The question my dad asked me many times. The short answer is: my career. I was hellbent on working in book publishing and everything I had done in high school and college was preparing me for it. New York is the hub for many different career paths, but especially publishing. You essentially could not work in the industry unless you lived in New York. The pandemic has slightly changed that with remote work but more and more offices are requiring in-person days. Since I was 17 and with this goal in mind, I knew I’d be moving to New York eventually. For someone who loves the mountains and long stretches of road to drive on, it took me a while to come around to it but as I got older I started getting more and more excited for my future life in the city.

Why now?

Another question my dad asked me many times. In 2021, I graduated from college and was accepted into the Columbia Publishing Course held at Oxford University. It was a goal I had been working towards all throughout college and when I heard the news, I fell to the floor and cried. Dramatic, I know. But, as it goes, the course had to be postponed because of the pandemic. This derailed my plans significantly -- I was going to go to the course, meet people there, find a roommate, and move to the city right after to start my career. Now, I had to wait a whole year. I felt like my life had been put on hold.

In the midst of all of this, I was going through an awful breakup that took a lot from me. Above all, this breakup ruined my hometown for me. I had to get out, I felt like I was suffocating. Every street was a reminder, every road was a memory. I left because, really, I felt like I had to to survive. (Dramatic, I know.)

Before I moved to New York, I almost moved to North Carolina…and Maine…and Oregon. I was all over the place, my plans having been derailed and my anxiety at its peak. I looked at apartments in each of these places and looked up grocery store clerk openings. I didn’t care what I was doing, I just wanted to be anywhere else but Tallahassee. I finally decided on New York, since I knew I wanted to be there anyway, and thus started my journey of the impossible: finding an affordable apartment in New York City.

So, like, how?

In a Facebook group, I met my roommate Kali (hi Kali!) who I lived with for two years on the Upper East Side. We searched for apartments for months and the one we ended up picking was a fifth, yes I said fifth, floor walk up with a living room that could only fit a loveseat, and my room that was quite literally a box without a traditional door--just a sliding door. 

But it was ours. And I loved it. There’s so many things I want to say about this apartment and what it gave me. Really, what it boils down to is, this apartment gave me a new life and while it was hard as hell to get up those stairs every day, it reminded me I was alive. And I needed that reminder. It was small and I had to learn how to fit my stuff into tiny corners and on window sills. But it was mine.

A special shoutout to Kali, who I don’t think I’d be in New York if not for her. Deep down, I was scared to move and make this drastic change, but I knew I had committed to moving with her and I couldn’t back down once we found the apartment. She was counting on me. It was like holding someone’s hand and letting them jump off the cliff first, their weight doing the hard work of jumping for you.

When I tell people I moved to New York without a job they normally scoff at me and assume my parents helped me, which wasn’t the case. I had worked hard and built myself a hefty savings account and had the stubbornness of a bull to make myself get a job in the first few months of living in the city. It also helped that I was on-and-off freelance writing for a company and somehow, some way, I ended up making exactly enough to pay for my first month of rent before I started my new job (more on that soon). It was terrifying and exhilarating and exhausting and so much fun. 

I don’t think the purpose for this post is to give advice since all of our stories are so different. But if you’d like a tiny sliver of advice, consider taking up freelance writing/copywriting/other profession while you settle into a new place. Join groups online to meet potential roommates and ask locals questions about different neighborhoods to find the best one for you. Find an apartment next to a (good) subway station. Oh! And use Google Maps for everything to see what things actually look like.

Since I wanted to wait until after the Columbia Publishing Course to find a job in publishing, I instead applied to Trader Joe’s, local coffee shops, every damn bookstore in the city, and so much more. Finally, the job I landed on was a nanny. I was a nanny for three kids on the Upper East Side for a year and it was both challenging and incredibly formative for me. 

Their apartment was massive, beautiful, and had three living rooms. It felt like a dream walking in there every day. I picked the kids up from school, took them to sports practices, to friends houses, and finally home where I’d help with homework and bath time and bed time.

I learned the city this way, with a five year old attached to my hand. I got really, really good at guessing bus times and anticipating how fast we could walk to cut down on time. I got really, really good at making mac and cheese, and tucking them into bed, and crying in the bathroom so they wouldn’t see, and learning patience, and learning how to communicate boundaries to a child, and reading children’s stories to help them fall asleep, and reading my own books any time there was a silent moment. 

It was lonely. I didn’t have coworkers, just the children as my company. I read a lot of Mary Oliver and ate a lot of pesto pasta. I went to work every day and came home mostly every night, not venturing off to the East Village to go out or do one of the million activities New York has to offer. I was settling, I was taking my time. (I still am.)

In the background of all of this, I was also restarting my photography business from the ground up with new branding and new clientele. I started booking pretty quickly and have been incredibly blessed with the steady amount of work I’ve gotten. 

I built a new life in this crazy city. I don’t want to gloss over how hard it was because it was incredibly hard. It still is hard. The first year specifically was extremely tough as I was terribly lonely, missing my friends and family and my comfort zone of my hometown, learning what it meant to have long distance friendships, always going the wrong damn way on the street because of my Google maps (I still do this), always missing the train by a few seconds, always struggling to carry my groceries home, always wondering if I made a mistake. 

People love to romanticize the city because, well, it’s easy to. It’s a beautiful place with so much to do and see and learn and experience. But most days are boring, mundane, and can be downright awful. People don’t see all the times you cry on public transportation (because where else are you going to cry?), or the pure exhaustion of walking all day, or the overstimulation of sounds, or the craziness you experience on the subway, or lugging laundry to your apartment’s basement or to the laundry mat down the block. They don’t see the days when you walk down the street surrounded by herds of people and feel the most alone you’ve ever felt. 

But they also don’t see the old man on the stoop tipping his hat to you every morning, or your bodega guy knowing your sandwich order by heart, or the sound of all of our shoes walking over the crosswalk in unison or the leaves falling in Central Park or the jaywalking and skateboarding down streets or the man who always plays saxophone on that one bench or the groups playing chess on the sidewalk every night or the snow resting on gargoyles or the intimacy of kissing on a street corner for all to see or jazz music at midnight or poetry being read aloud at an open mic like a sermon.

This city is its people. I am one of them now. I am lucky.

— Carah Gedeon