The last time I felt truly at home and in love with the place I was living was the spring of 2013.
It was my junior year of college and even though I was studying civil engineering, I had planned ahead before even setting foot at Lehigh University to be able to study abroad for a semester without needing to do technical engineering classes (story for another time).
In January of 2013 I found myself getting on a plane headed for Florence, Italy with one checked bag, one carry-on duffle, and a backpack. I lived with my amazing host mother, Laura, a roommate, Liz, and Laura’s very shy cat, Wendy. We shared a three bedroom apartment just outside the city center, and I spent four months studying Italian, architecture, and my favorite, Renaissance art history.
I gave up my smart phone for a little brick that barely texted and took worse photos. I took my trusty point-and-shoot camera everywhere. I took weekend trips with my classmates to see the beauty of Venice, Siena, Milan, and Rome. And with every new exploration, I fell in love with the magic of Florence and Italy.
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Now it’s easy to say that living in Italy is a magical dream and everything is wonderful blah blah blah… but the root cause of my happiness there was the lifestyle. I was genuinely fascinated with the city, learning every street, visiting every museum, finding a local osteria that a friend and I would go to every Sunday for dinner. It felt like home because I was always interested in learning more about it, becoming part of it. And in turn, Florence became a part of me.
And then my time was up and I had to go “home”, to what no longer felt like true home.
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Now fast forward to the end of college. I returned to Lehigh, finished my undergrad degree, and added a masters. I applied for jobs with the dream of moving to New York City, of living the dream of working in the greatest city in the world. What happened instead is another long story for another time, but in a nutshell, I found a job that was interesting enough that it tempted me away from the bright lights of Manhattan and made me settle for a small town just outside the city, across the Hudson river, called Nyack.
I lived and worked in Westchester & Nyack for about 4 years (2015 - 2019), and during that time I had an interesting job, but the location was too small. My occasional weekend train into the City just didn’t cut it. I was bored and I felt trapped. I was living in the suburbia / small town vibe I had always hated, and following a job just hadn’t been enough.
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In my 4th year outside NYC, I started working with a colleague in another office (but at the same company) down in Baltimore, Maryland. We worked (virtually) side by side for a few months, and through her I heard about Baltimore and the office my company had there. It was right downtown, she walked to work every day, there was a lovely harbor view, and the office itself was a smaller close-knit group than the bigger company HQ I was spending my days in.
I’m not sure exactly when I made the decision, but at some point I decided that I was over NY, my Manhattan dreams just weren’t what I wanted anymore, and I needed a change. So without ever having been to Baltimore, I decided to move there.
Now before you think I’m crazy, I did actually visit a few times to check out the office, go to some local events, and walk around in the neighborhoods I was thinking of living in to see where I might want to end up. But after 2 visits, I found an apartment, signed a lease, packed up my stuff, and moved to Maryland in July of 2019.
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From July 2019 - March 2020, I explored Baltimore. I tried dozens upon dozens of restaurants, I went to a concert or two, I checked out the Aquarium, I made day trips to Annapolis & DC, I made friends with my new co-workers. I even got to hang out with my cousin who had also moved to the same place. By all reports I was making a home in Baltimore.
Then COVID hit. The city I had just started to know shut down. I moved from my office into my apartment, and spent the following months working from Home. By Christmas, I had spent almost the same amount of time working from home that I had working from my new office. While I had enjoyed getting to know Baltimore when I had first moved, the new-ness of it definitely had me wearing some rose colored glasses. By Christmas of 2019 I was starting to realize that Baltimore wouldn’t be my forever home. By July 1, 2020, I made the choice to re-sign my lease for another year because the uncertainty of COVID made me unwilling to uproot.
I spent the time between March & December 2020 watching the world from my window. I saw COVID rage, I saw the rise of Black Lives Matter. I saw the increased tensions across the country as our fellow citizens fought for the basic right to not live in fear. I saw the heavy things. I also saw the more simple things. The families struggling to juggle schooling and childcare and work. People getting more and more isolated, and then feeling the mental effects of the constant stress. The world was burning all around us, and it seemed like everyone just felt very powerless to do anything about it.
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Then in January 2021 something clicked. The vaccine was developed and was starting to be rolled out. The US had a new President-Elect, a female VP-elect, Democrats had control of the House & Senate. I could finally see some light at the end of what had been not just a COVID tunnel, but a 4-year long tunnel for me. I could literally breathe easier. And as I saw the beginning of that light, I realized that I had been following a job to various locations for over 5 years, looking for a sense of place and purpose, and it wasn’t working.
After working from home for over 9 months, I knew that I could keep doing that. But what if home wasn’t in Baltimore? What if it was somewhere else, somewhere I had wanted to visit but hadn’t yet? An idea was born.
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Now we get to the point of this story. As I realized that I wasn’t happy in Baltimore, nor had I been happy outside of NYC, I knew that I needed to stop following a job and instead start following my heart to find a place that truly spoke to me. I’ll take a second here to acknowledge that this is possible to even think about because I’m privileged enough to have a job that lets me work remotely, and I’ve been able to keep that job throughout COVID. For those things I am eternally grateful.
So as my wanderlust for new horizons started, I got to thinking about places across the US that spoke to me. Places I want to visit and things in them that I want to experience. I started making maps and spreadsheets (as I do for everything travel related). I came up with a few places to focus on, and decided that when my apartment lease ends in June 2021, I will pack up my furniture and extra stuff in a storage unit, pack up my car with my essentials and my little doggo Fred, and I aim to spend a month each in 5-6 locations to test them out and see if I can find a glimmer of the spark that living in Florence lit within me.
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You may be asking… you said you were doing this in June… but it’s January. Why are you already talking about this? Doing this kind of nomadic travel will definitely take some serious planning. Also, in the wise words of Jedidiah Jenkins (paraphrased), if you’re going to do something a bit crazy, tell as many people as possible beforehand so they can all keep you accountable to your own dream.
With that in mind, this is my declaration of intent to get out of my comfort zone, to get out of Baltimore, and to go do some exploring to hopefully find a new happy place.
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I intend to share the journey of how I prepare for this trip, and also of course what I find in each location. I’ll still make the occasional Victinerary or Photo Diary of cool places, but for day to day logistics and the whole planning process, stay tuned to this space for all the updates!
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I can’t wait to share this wild ride with you. Let’s go find an adventure.
~ Victoria