I fled NYC amid COVID — and it was the best decision of my life.
Late October, 2020 — Brooklyn
Late October, 2020 — Brooklyn
The NY Post wrote about my return to The City after fleeing. Soon I may be on television. The only way to express the sudden press coverage: Oy+Yo!
Did my blog or writing for PS I Love You earn me attention? Was it ten years running my digital agency, Thacher? My unsold but hilarious and touching spec dramedy screenplays I pitched at SONY? Nope, credit goes to Facebook, that sinkhole of Russian agitprop and (unsolicited please God stop) baby photos.
A journalist found me on Into the Unknown, a group set up by Rebekah Rosler for people fleeing New York during the scariest, earliest days of the pandemic. It’s a private forum to discuss the pros and cons of towns outside the city, to swap home buying tips and offer support. I love it. Asking for advice and chatting with people going through the same dislocation was a balm when inhabiting in-law apartments with carpeting from the Reagan administration in rural New England as I wondered: stay or leave, return or abandon?
I even went on one date from the group and became buddies with a musician who moved from the East Village to Tulsa. Who says Facebook is just for low information/high discrimination white people without college degrees?
Speaking of Republicans: Do an interview, add a photographer, write a misleading clickbait headline and voila, you have a New York Post article! Yes, the same periodical that published a completely false story about the Biden campaign. Gotta love the 21st Century.
But… truly, I’m grateful to the journalist for her attention and for making a few corrections about the farm and my time there.
Sidebar: I miss the ’90s. Imagine the radical convenience of the internet without the addiction of smartphones or invasiveness of social media, and before the tech world was swallowed up by a small handful of monopolists. It was wild, it was heaven, and it was… temporary.
I fled NYC amid COVID - and it was the worst decision of my life
They took off in a hurry - but these New Yorkers are on the express line back to the city. When the pandemic hit in…nypost.com
Back to the story. Contrary to Post’s headline, I loved leaving New York. It was a great decision. The anxiety of solitary confinement in a tiny and wildly expensive apartment while my income dropped, a rising death rate, the fear of infection… and the urgent need for rural life set me free.
My farmer friend Andrew in Massachusetts, and then my homesteader friend Jesse in Vermont, offered me shelter and hospitality, friendship without condition, time to get my hands and knees dirty in their fields and raised beds as we sowed, weeded, watered and harvested together. I miss sitting with Jesse on his lawn to watch the sun fall behind the Adirondacks, or hiking with Andrew to a forest pond as fish rise and dapple still waters.
My second best decision of 2020? Returning to New York, this time to Brooklyn, which has more trees, slightly less oligarchic rents and no skyscrapers blocking out the sky.
Now, back in the city, I’m reconnecting with friends, dating with more kavanah/intention, enjoying the diversity of a city and celebrating Jewish life — in a mask, outdoors, carefully — with one of the world’s largest and most active Jewish communities. I wouldn’t change any of these 2020 decisions for a second. I’m grateful to old friends, my expansive family and to strangers on Facebook for their support.
Soon I may also be thanking Inside Edition if I get on television. We’ll see. Reminds me of Andy Warhol’s quote from a Swedish exhibition in 1968.
“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
Soon my time will be up, it may be already. The attention is like ice cream, pleasurable in small amounts that quickly melt away.
