How Covid made me re-lose – and fall back in love with – New York

Without travel, I missed New York terribly - and I realized I need to spend time there to feel more like me

In 2005, the year I turned 40, I moved upstate after living in New York City for 15 years, relinquishing a part of my identity I thought I never would.

I'd dreamt about being a writer in the electric city from the time I was a teen sneaking in by myself on the Long Island Rail Road, and people-watching all around Manhattan. I moved there in my mid-20s after a failed suburban starter marriage. Over the course of a blissfully stimulating but sometimes lonely decade-and-a-half there, I reinvented myself from a suburban dork to a city geek, a freelancer with a finger on the pulse of the vibrant arts and social scenes. It was where I became me.