I saw this Forbes.com article today on my Yahoo! home page.
Best Bang for Your Buck Cities
I’ll admit that at first I didn’t read the whole article all the way through. I skimmed down to the end where I saw the “Read full list” link and found that three of the places I’ll be visiting this week were pretty high up. (I’ve since read the whole thing) It’s the second time I’ve seen some good news out of North Carolina. The first one was this article about America’s fastest recovering cities. Raleigh was in the top 10.
I’ve been so obsessed with this trip and the possibilities that might come from it that I’ve all but forgotten the little mini-trips that Chuck and I planned on taking. We would still like to go to Maryland and North into New England. Places like Salisbury and Providence are on the physical list, but mentally, I had almost excluded them.
What brought them back to the forefront of my mind was visiting my friend Lex for her birthday this weekend. I’ll be missing her big birthday bash because of my vacation so I took her out to the Cheesecake Factory in White Plains. For the most part many of my friends are within a couple hour’s driving distance. I’ll admit that even though I graduated almost five years ago, I’m still having trouble adjusting to not having my friends around at all hours of the day like I did at Manhattanville.
If I move to North Carolina seeing them will become a once a year thing instead of once a month thing. As someone who is so dependent on her friends for emotional and physical support, I feel that it would make me even more sad to be so far away and know that I chose to be that far.
But, while all of my friends have moved on to the next stage in life I stumble behind. At one of the oldest I’m also the furthest back in life.
Do I struggle here so that I can have the comfort of knowing my friends are nearby?
Or,
Do I move away to a place that can offer me the life I want to live, with the man I want to live it with, but give up the physical closeness Long Island offers me now?
Ariella
