Should reporters relocate for a job?

The subject of today's blog post wasn't hard to come up with: I recently made the decision to relocate for a job opportunity.

However, even nearly two weeks into the job I'm still grappling with how to explain my decision-making process. It's sort of like someone throws you in a forest and tells you to find your way back to camp. You know you were at camp; you know you're only 3 miles away; but you also know you don't recognize anything where you are.

Moving is one of the most stressful experiences in life, and so is taking a new job. Combined, you might as well get a divorce or grieve the loss of your puppy. I haven't researched this, but I imagine it's even harder as one ages.

When I was 39 I drove across the country for a job in New York. It had been my lifelong dream to work in the Big Apple, having grown up on Woody Allen movies and fancied myself a kind of Mariel Hemingway-esque character. I would grow sophisticated on the Upper East Side and learn to sip cosmopolitans with Carrie and friends.

New York lived up to the billing - and then some. I moved for New York, not the job. In fact, the boss-to-be at the time said to me: "Don't move here just for us." I said, "I won't." When that job didn't work out, I still had New York, or more accurately Connecticut (where I was living).

It's far trickier when you find yourself moving someplace you never imagined yourself living. While most of my friends and family members imagine I never really wanted to work in Wyoming (where I once interviewed) or rural Massachusetts (where I also interviewed), the fact is, huge parts of my heart resonate in both areas. I drove through Wyoming on the aforementioned trek and found its wild openness invigorating. I also fancy myself a true New Englander now after over a dozen years in Connecticut.

Falls Church, Virginia, where I am now, was never on my radar. Working in DC wasn't either. I'd only been to the capitol thrice, each time a fun experience, but it seemed more like a place to visit rather than live. Yet when I told people I was moving here for work, resoundingly, everyone projected their excitement on to me.

"Oh! Washington is such an exciting place! Enjoy the transition. So many monuments, so much history, so much to do!"

None of that factored into my decision to take this job, though. I took the job because I needed a full-time position, liked the person who would be my boss, and figured at least I'd be (more or less) still in the Northeast. It bugged me, I must admit, that I was still secretly pining for New York.

Yet as a journalist, nothing is more enriching than having to do as I did - pick up and go, learn to traverse new terrain, make new friends, learn new mores and memorize new Metro procedures (took me a week to remember to slap my Smart Card on the turnstile both when going into the terminal and leaving).

In the long run, having to be lonely in a new place -- yes, I said it -- can only feed the very mill that drives the machine that makes me a journalist. Without friends here, I will be forced to meet new people. I will be forced to see things in a new way. I will get lost. I will cry. I will fall.

So far, some days have been very rocky, while at times, it's been ethereal. I love noticing new types of trees here in Virginia, or seeing a different busker at the Falls Church Metro after work each day.

And who knows, maybe in time I won't keep comparing every citizen I see to the bustling populous of Manhattan or the refined, good-hearted New Englanders I left behind. Maybe. But then again, it's too soon to tell. Photos: top - the author in front of the White House soon after arriving in the area in May, 2017; bottom - on a cruise on Harbor Cruise Line of the East River, photo by Jason Sagebiel.