Comfort Zone

   It’s been just over a year since I hopped out of that taxi in Brooklyn, wide-eyed and fresh off the plane from Florida, my home of the last 24 years. I got rid of almost everything I owned, found an apartment on Craigslist and bought the plane ticket. I was moving to New York City. 

     I ran into my new roommate in the lobby of our building. We had only met through FaceTime when I interviewed for the summer sublet. We reintroduced ourselves, our sneakers silent on the terrazzo floor as we made our way to the elevator and pressed four. It wasn’t long before the question came. The same question that I had become so familiar with these past couple of months. 

    “So why’d you move to New York?”

    “I just wanted to change it up,” had become my go-to answer. 

     It didn’t take long for me to shed my laundry list of reasons and stick with this convenient, honest summary. Sometimes I would follow up with another brief, vague idea…

    “I wanted to get out of my comfort zone.”

    People tended to resonate a lot more with this second idea. At first, their strong reactions came as a bit of a surprise, but it soon became clear that a lot of people have a complicated relationship with this thing we call “the comfort zone”. Myself included. 

     Rewind to a few months before I hopped out of that taxi. I’m sitting in the kitchen of my one-bedroom apartment in St. Petersburg, FL and I start the day like I would any other, drinking coffee and writing in my journal. But today is a little bit different. Today is the day that I tell my landlord I’m moving. The lease has been on a month to month basis and he asked that I give him a couple of months’ notice if I ever decided to move. 

   I turned to look through the front window as he pulled his burgundy pick-up truck into the front yard. The late morning sun glanced down the windshield and cast a dull shine across the speckled, peeling paint of the hood. I grabbed the envelope on the counter, “Rent 11-1-22” scrawled across its front, and headed outside. I wasn’t expecting to be as nervous as I was.  

    Part of me has always wanted to move out of Florida and that part has finally prevailed. The same part of me that wants to be challenged, to wade through the uncertain but exciting waters of change and see what’s on the other side, to experience new things that expand one’s perspective of the world. 

    It was difficult to silence the fears that swirl around making the “right decision.” The right decision isn’t always easy, but It’s impossible to know if it’s the  right choice if you never choose. Choosing to stay in your comfort zone is a much different experience than being afraid to leave. Simply having a choice is already a gift that shouldn’t be ignored. 

    After breaking the news to my landlord, I walked back inside as his truck gurgled out of the grass and pulled away. My nerves had been replaced with excitement. I felt empowered to finally be turning these thoughts into action. There was a lot to do these next couple of months. 

    Before I knew it, I was standing on the curb at the airport, shouldering my backpack and waving goodbye to family. The last couple of months had been a whirlwind of emotions. The mounting excitement punctuated by spells of sadness and nostalgia at the closing of a chapter. 

    I sat at the gate, my mind buzzing as I unwrapped an overpriced breakfast sandwich that led to thoughts of money. I finagle a packet of ketchup from deep inside  the greasy bag. Financially, I’d done as much as I could to prepare for this move. I'd been saving for a couple of years knowing this day would eventually come. I sprawled the guts of my entire apartment across two tarps in the front yard and sold nearly everything. My truck too. But despite being prepared financially, there was only so much I could do to prepare emotionally. 

    It was a smooth flight. I took a taxi across Brooklyn and finally made it to where I’d be living for the summer. After a chance meeting with the new roommate, I left my luggage in the bedroom and went downstairs to take a walk around my new neighborhood. The excitement was palpable. I stepped out of the building and onto the large sidewalk of Ocean Parkway. I looked both ways and decided to go left. Benches lined the avenue, full of people enjoying the setting sun. I heard more different languages in the first seven minutes of my walk than I had the past year in Florida. Six lanes of traffic hummed along to my right, punctuated by honking and the occasional motorcycle. I chose an empty bench and sat down to soak it all in. I had finally made it to New York (and I was over the moon.) 

    The excitement of being here still persists more than a year later. I love this city. But change is a double edged sword. It can be just as much a source of excitement as it can discomfort. At times it’s hard to remember that discomfort, in moderation, can be a positive. It’s an opportunity to grow, to learn something about yourself and others, about the world. To remember that we didn’t come here because it would be easy. We came because we craved a challenge, an opportunity. To wade through the exciting but uncertain waters of change and see what’s on the other side. 

    I think back to my first day here, sitting on that bench along Ocean Parkway. I’ll never forget how I felt. I think of everybody else who moved here on that same day, May 16th, 2023, and try to imagine how they felt too. No matter how different our lives had been up to that point, we all shared the commonality of starting a new chapter in NYC that day. Whether it was excitement, fear, elation, despair or pure determination, we were all experiencing something new. We were all changing it up.