Where Should You Live

There comes a point in everyones life when they realize they aren’t a kid anymore. And this point of realization recently happened to me. Where was I, in a bar having a glass of 1 euro red wine in one of my favorite places in Madrid, Café Olmo. I was sitting across from a friend who is twenty-five when it hit me, I’m going to be thirty. Okay, yes, thirty, many people have talked about hitting thirty, “it’s not so bad,” “it’s just another year” “You’ll of course have to get married sooner so that you can have babies faster. You know, you’re not such a spring chicken.” After my realization sunk in, I immediately e-mailed my best friend in New York. “We’re going to be thrity this year…Sorry, minor freak out.” Obviously, it’s a normal thing for people to flip before they are going to turn thirty, and it’s something that I never understood when I was twenty-five. I thought it’s just thirty, it’s no big deal. But, then, you get to the point where you are about to turn thirty and all of a sudden it’s like you’re almost  fifty. Yep, I said it.

Walking back to my apartment on the night of my realization  I stopped and looked around me. Thank god I’m not one of those thirty years olds who look back at their life and think, what have I done with it. True. I’m lucky that I have no regrets, found the career I want, and been able to take risks to travel, and live in a foreign country. So, okay, turning thirty isn’t that bad if you’re happy with your life. Great! Check. Well here’s the thing, people always talk about how hard it is to figure out what it is you want to do with your life, but nobody ever tells you that after you’ve figured out what you want to do, you still have to figure out where to live that life. Difficult.

So you can live anywhere in the world, right, so why do you live where you live? Why do I live where I live. Is it the best place for me? Could I be happier somewhere else? Meet the love of my life somewhere that I’m not? So I’m standing in the street in front of the door to my apartment building in Madrid thinking holy shit I’m about to turn thirty and I live in Madrid. Awesome, yes, but, there’s one tiny problem that’s been an issue since living in this magnificent city for the last four years – my family, my friends, pretty much everything I left behind…it’s still there.

To recap a bit what the purpose of the blog is right now …

So I’m back from the holiday extravaganza! A fun filled weekend with the fam, spending time with my six month old niece, eating food, reading, relaxing, e.t.c. Topics of conversations: Where my sister and her husband are going to send miss Loo to school. And where am I going to live. Big question.

My father asked, “if we weren’t here, meaning if your family didn’t live in the U.S., would you come back?” I answered no. So between bites my parents, sister and brother-in-law threw around states and cities that they thought might be similar, in someway, to Madrid. The mission, to see if there is any place in the U.S. that I can be as happy, relaxed, and as excited to be a part of like I am in Madrid.  Reason … to be closer to family.

In comes the blog. Over the next couple months I’m going to see if I can turn my New York City life into my Madrid life. Why? Because I’m in my New York City apartment for a couple months before heading back to Madrid, and if I don’t try to change the way I live/think here, all the positive energy and outlook I have now will be gone … Not so good.  Many might be thinking, well, if New York gets you down, move … But I’m thinking, I love New York, I just need to figure out how to make it more like Madrid so that I can enjoy it. If it turns out I can’t lead the same kind of life in New York as in Madrid, I’ll have to try another city … Maybe I’ll have to spend some time in every city in the U.S. to know if I could move back here for good. But now I’m getting ahead of myself.

On the bolt bus heading back to New York … And mission number 3 will definitely be one serving tray! Why I’m starting with material things is because once the pieces are in place – my mind will follow.

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