I lived with my close friend Sally for three years, and that entire time there was a bumper sticker on our refrigerator that said, “If you’re waiting for a sign, this is it.” I walked by that sticker a hundred times a day, but never really took it to heart.
In college, another friend visited my family’s beach house for a night and ended up staying a week. He was in turmoil – unsure about the state of his current relationship, or his life in general to be honest.
We were new to boating, and one day while we were out on the water, I had to jump in and pull up the anchor. I was treading water while holding the anchor, and decided to give myself a little break, sinking under the water. My Mom, convinced I was drowning, yelled to my friend to dive in and save me. He did, his Ray-Bans disappearing the moment he hit the water.
I felt awful, but he took it as a sign. His girlfriend had given him those glasses, and in his eyes, it was clearly a sign that he needed to break things off. He did, and he hasn’t looked back since.
I’ve always been drawn to the romanticism of seeing signs in the randomness of everyday life. But, I’m a worrier and a classic over-thinker. The magic of taking something as a sign wears off as soon as you start to imagine how following the sign could lead to debt, homelessness, friendlessness, and all-around despair.
So, there I was in Charlotte – spending my weekends bingeing The West Wing, pretty certain I was going nowhere fast at my job, and still writing about wanting to head back to New York, but not doing anything to make that happen - when I got a LinkedIn message.
First, I had to Google Parsippany, New Jersey. I only had to zoom out two times before I saw New York City appear on the map, and I thought, “a sign?”
I wrote back that I was interested, and a little over a month later I had a job offer.
Saying it’s not easy to follow your heart is an understatement. The last time I went off a gut reaction when it came to accepting a job offer, I left a job I really enjoyed and then got laid off a little over a year later. Would I be making the same mistake?
That’s my problem, thinking of everything as a mistake. In this anxiety-riddled head of mine, nothing is ever a learning experience or an opportunity, it’s just another mistake. I’ve never been able to give myself a little grace.
But, this time – I followed the sign. I dove in the water, Ray-Bans on.
I had about ten days to drive up to New Jersey, find an apartment, go back to Charlotte and finish packing up my place there, then drive back up to New Jersey with all of my earthly possessions the weekend before I started work. No sweat.
I had it in my head that I was going to live in Hoboken – close-ish to work from my map stalking and, even better, closer to my friends in the city. My Mom and I got the most perfect AirBnB in the heart of Hoboken, and we started the search.
After six years in the south, I’ve been spoiled by space.
We looked at a “one bedroom” on Hoboken’s main street that was mostly underground, had only linoleum floors, and shared what was advertised as a back patio with a Chinese restaurant. In the middle of the bedroom area there was a skylight, where I imagined lying in bed, smelling of General Tso sauce, watching pigeons fight over stray lo mein noodles.
We went to an apartment building where three girls were shuffling rooms, and clearly trying to shuffle the security deposit out of their name. The walls had been painted sloppily, dull blue running into the popcorn ceiling, and there were deep scratch marks across the hardwood floors. Best of all, a psychotic dog who never left his room lived in the next room over, and throughout our tour we heard him growling and slamming his small body into the door.
We woke up Friday morning and did a test drive from Hoboken to Parsippany, where I would be working. I pulled into the parking lot after an hour and fifteen minutes of death-gripping the steering wheel. That wouldn’t have been too bad, I figured, but then we learned that in the coming days they were closing half of the lanes on 495, in what had been described as “Carmageddon.”
So, I reluctantly visited Montclair, the town ten miles from the city that I had been told to check out. I’m so glad that I did.
If I had to describe Montclair to someone that’s never been here, I’d say take everything you picture when you picture New Jersey, and think the opposite. It’s like Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls, but in the mountains. It’s like Chapel Hill, but with less polos and more tattoos. There are hydrangeas everywhere, and every house has a turret. As my Dad says, "It puts the garden in Garden State."
After a few days of driving around, searching Craigslists and asking random Montclair residents on the street about places for rent, I found a spacious 550 square foot apartment a block from the direct train to NYC. It’s near a donut shop and a brewery and I can get to Penn Station in thirty minutes flat.
It’s been difficult, both financially and emotionally. After six years of living at most a few hours from my family, I’m now four states and a district away. My best friend’s two-year-old recently started saying my name and talking about my cat, and to say that I cried hysterically at the thought of leaving her and her tiny sister is an understatement.
But I’ve also made fast friends with a hilarious British girl that’s also new to the area, that can’t wait to have a southern Thanksgiving with my family in Raleigh. I’ve bar hopped with best friends I left behind in the city all those years ago, and I’ve drank tequila til the early hours of the morning with best friends from Raleigh that call NYC home now, too.
In my first week of work, I was on a conference call with an agency in Tanzania, and words I wrote were translated into Swahili for a pitch. I listened to market research calls. I very confidently walked into the wrong meeting and sat down at the table. I was put into the email server as Mary Hanley-Coleman, and spent a good part of the day explaining to people that my name is Mary-Hanley, not just Mary. Double names are not super common up here.
I’ve been deeply embarrassed and extremely confident. I’ve questioned myself incessantly and I’ve acted with abandon. I've asked for a lot of help, and it's been given to me. I’ve forced myself to go outside my comfort zone, to extrovert a little more than I normally would – and it’s paid off.
I was recently walking back from the Farmer’s Market on my block, carrying a bag of heirloom tomatoes, fresh burrata, and a handful of sunflowers, and I had butterflies in my stomach. I thought about the work I was doing, and the friends I’ve made and reconnected with, and when I thought about the decision I made, I didn’t think of it as a mistake.
Yet.