As some of you may know, I’m a spiritual junkie and want to share with you all the journey Andrew and I have been on this past year that has guided our major life decision to move from New York City to Florida – which has been quite the positive change to say the least!
We have lived in the New York City for 8 years – it’s hard to believe since I don’t remember a world without Andrew in it. He has truly made me a better person and helped me grow in so many ways! We met pretty spontaneously shortly after both moving to the city – we happened to have mutual friends who worked together at the time. Andrew from Long Island and me from Pennsylvania (but moved from Orlando Florida after graduating from UCF).
The spark was instant – we were both bright eyed and ready to take on this mad city! It didn’t matter that we could barely pay our rent or buy a decent meal – I lived on ramen noodles for a straight month after blowing my first few pay checks on “going out” and shopping on Fifth Avenue. And ate dollar pizza most nights. It was a magical time of adventure and exploration – inspiration at every corner. All in all, I lived fully. I made countless mistakes. I learned from each and every one of them and continued onwards. The future was unknown and I was content not even thinking about it.
It really is the most dynamic, inspiring city in the world and I’m so thankful to have lived so many years of my life in such a beautiful place. The magic of New Yorkers is our ability to make things happen – we don’t just talk about “what if this” and “what if that”. We get up every day passionate and driven to make our dreams a reality. And that’s just what we have been doing…for 8 years! Always reflecting and recalibrating our goals, taking on new challenges and learning, growing through the process. It’s not easy. Its really hard most of the time – the people, the place, all of it. But it’s inspiring to be surrounded by such passionate souls everyday.
You know, I’ve always been guided by my inner spirit and times when I’m confronted with a major life decision I speak openly to the universe and ask what I should do. Yes, I might be crazy – I don’t care! And then magic happens – I start seeing little signs here and there that reinforce that I’m on the right path. I remember the moment 8 years ago when I got a call back from Teen Vogue in New York City with the news they hired me on for my first job in their Fashion Department. I didn’t know much about the job and knew nothing about living in a city, but my inner guide was saying YES YES YES , and there I went. I packed my bags and never looked back. I was terrified, but I did it. And I’m thankful that I listened to my inner voice and didn’t listen to the “fear” telling me all the reasons why I shouldn’t do it.
It is such an exciting time, because the past year we have gotten hitched (Read my post here) , traveled to so many beautiful places and throughout it all we have been doing some major reflecting and manifestation on our future goals. We decided we were ready for a change – but how drastic of a change? We knew that our city life-style was not able to support the exciting dreams we had in mind and eventually realized that it was time to part ways with our city home and find a new place to live for awhile. But where? That’s the part we couldn’t figure out on our own – so there I went again talking the Universe (Andrew thinks I’m crazy but now after the way things worked out maybe he believes)!
The first step was to sell our studio apartment so we had the freedom to afford to move – from past experiences we knew that this would be a long process …which it was…6 months long. The next thing was our jobs – how were we going to be able to continue to do what we love but live in a new place? After may years of terrible jobs, we were both finally happy in what we were doing – it seemed impossible to just walk away. We both started researching if there would be opportunities to keep our jobs and work remotely, but months went by and nothing really transpired…
There were so many moving parts which were all out of our control. That’s where the universe came in to help us! I started to notice signs reinforcing the idea that what we were working towards was possible. For instance, we were in Pennsylvania visiting my parents and we got a call from our broker letting us know we got an offer on our apartment. We were so excited, but then got immediately nervous, because we hadn’t figured out two major parts of the plan – our jobs and where to live! Then…the next day, literally the. next. day. Andrew got a phone call from his work offering him a promotion to a role (that he has been interviewing for months..) and the opportunity was in Florida! Even better, we had the flexibility to live in any city in the state since most of the work would be remote. How crazy is it that we got answers to two major parts of the plan pretty much within 12 hours?!! It was meant to be so we had to said yes! Shortly after, I talked to my job about working remotely and they said YES as well. All the pieces somehow fell into place in the perfect timing and we knew more than ever that we were on the right path…we are still in awe of how it all worked out the way it did. We couldn’t of planned it out if we tried…
Now that the major decisions were coming together, we were ready to head south! It’s been a whirlwind of emotions – bittersweet to say the least, but we continued to support each other and move towards our goal! We somehow managed to pack up our things into our SVU and figured it would be fun to road-trip stopping along the way to visit friends and family. We even stayed overnight in a Yurt which was pretty cool (Read my post about our “glamping” experience here). We have been in Florida for a few days now and it feels so good to just sit, breathe and stare out into the ocean and think back on how we got to this place. All we have is gratitude and thanks.
With all this said, the major take away of our story that I want to share with you, is that we all have the POWER to make any change to our lives. Big or small. It starts with you. The idea. The dream. The positive “why not me?” attitude. Be determined and trust the universe to guide you when you get to bumps in the road and you will find your way…all you have to do is listen to yourself and look for the signs. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite sayings
“Just for the record darling, not all positive change feels positive in the beginning. Sometimes the best things are the hardest things. Keep sticking it out until the positive begins to feel positive.” – S.C. Louri
xo
Christen
