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In her essay  “Wear Sunscreen,  essayist Mary Schmich wrote that everyone should ;  "Live in New York City once but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once but leave before it makes you soft."    I never really understood  the full meaning of that until now.  Partly because  I had always incorrectly attributed the quote to  Armistead  Maupin, but mostly because I had never lived in New York.

Now having lived in both places,  I understand what she was talking about.  `

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area  for 16 years. Eight years in downtown San Francisco, and then after seven years in  Southeast London,  We moved back and lived another 8 years  in the East Bay in Downtown Oakland.     Then a little over a year and half ago, we  moved to New York City, living in Midtown Manhattan, just a stone’s throw from the United Nations.

I have always described Northern California as “an easy first date” .  San Francisco throws its doors open and happily takes whoever wants to come in. It is one of the few major US metro areas where you can still  live easily without  owning  a car.   Yes,  the Bay Area is expensive,  but  logistically  it is a very easy place to live.   So much so that  after a while you start to forget that the rest of the U.S.  isn’t  like that.  Places where Winter isn’t when temperatures dip into the low 60’s  and in summer  people need this thing called ‘air conditioning’?      As a result, living in  Northern California quickly becomes  comfortable

Or, as  Schmich puts it,  it can make you ‘soft.’

New York City is  the opposite.  While like SF,  people can  live here without the need to own a car.  Riding transit  in this city is part  reality show (Urban Survivor) and part National Geographic special.  

Consequently, New Yorkers with the means to, spend massive amounts of money on car services to take them pretty much everywhere.  The streets are full of massive fleets of  back SUV’s with tinted windows driven by people  in black suits  with white shirts and  thin black ties.   The fact that this results in more time spent in traffic than if you had just got out and walked,  is pretty much irrelevant. Also, the hallmark of NYC Traffic is drivers who  use their horns  like drivers in other places use headlights.

New York is an argument.   Every day you will find yourself in some sort of confrontation with some aspect of living in this city.   Apartment hunting makes The Hunger Games look like little league. People will rush on to the subway to get seats like they are half price IPads on Black Friday.    

Restaurants  are  about  the “experience”  far more than the food.   A good friend of ours works at one of the most expensive restaurants in this city.   It is a place where people go more to publicly demonstrate their ability to afford it,  than to actually enjoy it.

New York will fight you every day.  The line from the song is completely true, if you can make it here,  you really can make it anywhere. It’s largely why people in this city are the  aggressive,  often rude,  always competitive, amazingly resilient and successful  people that they are.   

The energy of this city is palpable,  intense,  exciting,  relentless and  frankly exhausting.  Which is why most New Yorkers you see on the street have the intense look of someone who is  about to come down off of a Red Bull high.  

Or as Schmich puts it,  New York can make you ‘hard.’

Don’t get me wrong,  New York deserves all  the hype.  It is  an amazing city, that truly never sleeps.  It’s self-image as the center of … everything is well earned.   But it is a place where the driving cultural force appears to be  FOMO.   (Fear of Missing Out)  I have seen people jump in a queue outside of a store on 5^th Avenue with no idea what it was for.  But people were lining up so it must be something,  and you don’t dare miss out.

Times Square is awash with “content creators / influencers”  all trying to film the next great  viral  tick-tock trend.  Where in the 70’s and 80’s  you  might have been  asked you if you were  “looking for good time”.  Now you’ll get handed a QR code and be asked to  “like and subscribe”.    

As a result, you know the moment you have transitioned from being a visitor to New York to someone who lives here is when you will happily go ten blocks out of your way just to avoid Times Square.

There is a great moment  from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company”  (which may well be,  the greatest musical where one of the central characters is  New York City - with all due respect to Bernstein).  During the song “Another Hundred People”, where one of the characters tells the lead she is moving away saying: "there's a time to come to New York, and a time to leave" 

Now our apartment is once again a sea of boxes and strapping tape with piles of belongings to sort through into Pack- Ship or Toss piles.  As we pack for  yet another move, this time, back to my hometown,  Madison, WI.    The original reason for the move to New York, was twofold;  First, to be closer to my parents  whose health was declining.  Flight time from SFO  to MSN under the best of circumstances was 6 hours plus, with the ever delightful connections in either Chicago or Denver. Second, was  to take a new  job in the financial / professional services sector,  the industry where I began my career nearly three decades ago.   

Then a year and half in,  two things happened.   The first was the sheer stupidity of the Trump administration.  Which  has made life and doing business very difficult for international companies who rely on global workforce mobility.   (Even for my employer which to put it bluntly,  has very close ties with Trump.)   So  having my role based in the U.S,  really didn’t  make sense.   So  we parted ways with a friendly handshake and  a very large check, for which I am quite grateful.

The second thing was my dad’s health took a  serious  and  sustained  downward turn.  So, we made the obvious choice to move to Wisconsin.  A decision that was made even easier when I was offered a  very interesting and challenging new job with the Wisconsin State Government .   

Friends  and colleagues have been full of  praise for our decision citing what a “good son” I am.   I have had to smile at that.   I think  if you were to poll my parents  for adjectives  to describe their experience raising me,  “good Son”  would make the list,  but probably not on the top half of it.

This past week  my dad passed away.   An event that has altered the context  for the move but not the core reasons for it.  Now the focus  shifts to my Mom,  and surprisingly,  revisiting my own roots.    

I was joking with my Mom that  we are going from living across from the UN, to living across from a  Kwik Trip.   A move that some would consider a definite step up. 

I guess we will soon find out.  As the Wisconsin state motto says….

“Forward”.