10 Lessons I’ve Learned From Living In Five Cities

1. Don’t try to replace the places you loved in your old city — find instead new places to love.
2. The anxiety and questioning, the should I have come here? I should be somewhere else, shouldn’t I? I should absolutely be somewhere else! (Should I?) is worst first thing in the morning and gradually decreases throughout the day. It decreases by about 50 percent just by pulling your ass out of bed and standing up to go brush your teeth. Almost without fail, by bedtime you’ll be so satisfied with your life in this new place. The next day, the cycle begins again until the new place just becomes the place where you live.
3. If you’re the type person who gets lost easily, buy a map rather than relying on your GPS. You’ll learn a lot quicker.
4. It takes a shockingly short amount of time to meet someone with a connection to your home state.
5. There are amazing people, your people, everywhere. True, the people you find in your new place won’t be the exact same as the people in your old place. But sometimes they’ll be better! And they’ll definitely be good.
6. When you’re new to a place, allot yourself $300-$700 to throw away on parking mistakes, rebuying kitchen necessities you accidentally left at your old place, etc. Do not feel guilty about this, accept it as an inevitability and move on.
7. West Coasters all love to talk about how aggressive East Coasters are. East Coasters love to talk about how lazy West Coasters are.
8. You can learn something from almost everybody you meet. I feel this way about dating, as well. There are some people who I’ve spent vast amounts of time with, who have taught me big, huge lessons. My college boyfriend, who I was with for three years, taught me what it means to be practical, determined, a hard worker. I carry him with me now everywhere I go. A guy I went on three dates with in Portland, Oregon taught me a very small but very valuable lesson: to not accept “you’re so lucky” when somebody hears that you have found your passion. “It’s not luck, it’s hard, hard, hard work and you should be proud of yourself,” he told me. (I also learned from him what an uncircumcised penis looks like in person.)
9. The time you spent in a place doesn’t go away when you leave. You spent time there, things happened, you connected with people. It’s over now? It’s OK — it still happened. Moving on doesn’t diminish its value.
10. The only person guaranteed to always be around to keep you company is yourself. You’d better make friends.

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