When I moved away from New York a year ago the most important thing to me was to get away from the break neck pace of the city. After 8 years I had enough of the Big Apple and it had enough of me. The energy that makes it such an exciting city sets a tempo that becomes exhausting. While that same pace fueled my drive, competitiveness, and career it also fueled my neurosis, obsessive behaviors, and stress level.

It all makes me wonder: was New York my chemotherapy?

I don’t think that I was sick in the first place, but NYC did act as an agent of fundamental, even cellular, change in me. It has altered my chemistry forever, for the better. It’s the kind of place that does that, it changes people.

And now it’s been a year of my life spent in the Bluegrass State. I’m leaving the job that I’ve been working at for the past year, a good decision on many levels.  Quiet and slow were good as a reaction to NYC but now I need more.  Just not more chemo.