~I really wanted to share this post before the one year anniversary of my move, but my wife and I needed more time to get the blog up. This was written around May 11th, 2025~
I started getting really into Taylor Swift’s music right around when I started planning to set fire to my life in NYC, pack up everything that would fit in an SUV including my wife and our cat, and drive halfway across the country to start a new life in my old home, an event I have come to think of as The Move.
We left NYC on July 10th, 2024. We arrived, very late at night or very early the next morning, 4am, on July 11th.
“One year later” is so often a time for reflection, but Taylor gives me a different measure, two months shy of a year, “300 takeout coffees later…”
Which, coincidentally, lands on what would have been, had I stayed, my 9 year anniversary in NYC.
I lost some friends in the move. It’s no accident that “Is it Over Now?” the song “300 takeout coffees later” comes from is a breakup song. (From an album that includes a song called “Welcome to New York” of all the irony. A song that I played on repeat while giggling hysterically to myself when my train got stuck underground three [3] weeks before the move.)
It’s hard to impossible to understate the intense hold the lyric “Let’s fast forward to 300 take put coffees later” has on me. Something about measuring time by the little daily activities that add up to a life really speaks to my soul. It reminds me a bit of “Seasons of Love” from RENT, – a quintessential NYC piece of theatre, and one that fueled my dreams of that city and the impossible-to-resist urge to romanticize artistic struggle and integrity.
“525,600 minutes
525,000 moments so dear
525,600 minutes
How do you measure
Measure A year?
In daylights
In sunsets
In midnights
In cups of coffee…”
We lost 1 box of books in The Move. We mailed 8, so I count that as a bittersweet win.
So much else was left behind. My wife and I live with my retired parents now, so a certain privacy Is lost. My wife’s adorable bedside table and most our linens wouldn’t fit in the car. I created a faux mantelpiece around an art piece of a woman dancing in flame. The painting and the mantelpiece went to the curb. (The former was immediately claimed – just how the painting came to us in the first place. Lost and found).
I slipped right over losing friends earlier in this post, but that was devastating. And yet, it was the right thing. I couldn’t keep people in my life who tried to talk my wife and I into staying in a place that was killing us and keeping us too far from family. It wasn’t that simple, of course, but it also was.
“Was it over then, and is it over now?”
I lost my favorite museum, the Cloisters, where the Unicorn Tapestries live. But I saw them 3 times first. More than most people ever will.
I lost my favorite coffeeshop in the move. An incredibly queer place called “The Chipped Cup” that energy and cost had kept me from visiting regularly for months at the time that I left.
But those little daily things that make up a life? Daylights, sunsets, midnights, cups of coffee? Turns out there are plenty of those here too. And I can see the sunsets better.
So…
“Let’s fast forward to 300 take out coffees later.”
“Was it over then?”
Oh yes.
“And is it over now?”
Oh no. It is just beginning.
Cheers to the next 300 takeout coffees*.
A note: I haven’t had a cup of coffee in over 12 years. Too many quadruple shot espressos and college all-nighters left me with an allergy to caffeine. The cup in the picture holds steamed milk and flavored syrup, but the sentiment still stands. Also yes, I still wear a mask when I’m in public. You should too. Resources about the ongoing nature of Covid on the blog’s resources page. I compassionately recommend taking a look.