The Best of Both Worlds
30-Day Writing Challenge Note: I, like my fellow 30-Day Writing Challenge comrades, am concerned that I have run out of ideas. To force creativity and productivity, I am following a 30-minute rule going forward. For every writing topic that does not give me any inspiration, I will limit myself to 30 minutes. Once the buzzer goes off, I will stop the sentence, bullet point, or tangent that I am on, copy the text from my working Word document, and post on medium.
And the timer starts…now.
Last year a friend and I decided to sell a condo that we had owned together. We were under agreement to sell to a young couple, and I was left with the decision of what to do next. Where to live? What to do with money, which I had never had before?
I was talking with a cousin, who also hails from Newport, RI, and I uttered something along the lines of “I wish there was a way that I could buy a house and live in Newport, but also maintain my career in Boston. That would be the best of both worlds”. And she said something along the lines of “Obviously, stupid. If people could do that, everyone would live in the most beautiful places in the world.”
What’s fascinating about shelter-in-place, quarantine, work-from-home, or whatever euphemism we want to use to describe our current crisis, is that it’s allowing people to live in the most beautiful places in the world, while also maintaining their career.[1]
I can move to Newport (at my parents’ house) and still maintain my career. I’m working from home, it may as well be at the place that brings me the most joy.
Why Newport? For those who have been there, I hope the answer is obvious. For those who haven’t — think of the physical beauty of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket or Cape Cod, without the Friday afternoon traffic. Think of a downtown with bars that are alive with bachelor and bachelorette parties all summer long, with live bands, cover charges, and long lines, but your friend from high school is the bouncer and let’s you in. Think of not worrying about how you’re getting home because you can walk or bike anywhere. Think of being hyper competitive, and being from a hyper competitive family, and playing a 2v2 golf match with your dad and 2 (of your three) brothers and everyone is equally matched. Think of drinking a super cold Coors Light (my preference — weird, I know) at the same beach where you learned to walk, swim, play rundown and then make out with chicks!
For me, Newport is the best place in the world. But I don’t think I want to be there right now.
1) I don’t want the vision of my home to be tainted by this skeletal existence. I don’t want to go home and chat with all the friends who still live in town and are out of work because the bars are closed. I don’t want to see the beach parking lot empty because the beaches are closed.
2) Many of those things that I think of when I think of Newport — you can’t do right now.
3) I have come to appreciate the physical beauty of where I live in Boston so much more. I want to condition this by saying that I walk to work, I bike to go to friend’s houses, etc, — I’m not now discovering that you can do physical activity in the city. What I have discovered is the quality of the physical activity that I can do in the city. I live two blocks from an urban beach named Carson Beach. It’s a former tidal flat — the ebbs and flows of high and low tide are startling. I take the dog there twice a day and for the most part we are by ourselves. The water quality — per scientific data — is better than the water on Cape Cod. While out on the paddleboard I look on over the JFK presidential library, designed by the legendary architect I.M. Pei (RIP).
Also two blocks away is Moakley Park. 65 acres of active parks (softball fields, soccer fields, etc.). Ball sports are banned. I walk there with the dog and we have 65 acres to ourselves. We throw the ball and look out over the Hancock and Prudential Towers.
We live at the base of a hill — at the top of the hill is Dorchester Heights. Dorchester Heights is a national park memorial for the Revolutionary stand against the British using the canons from Ft. Ticonderoga. It overlooks the entire city and faces west toward the sunset. At 6PM there are dozens of dogs up there enjoying a view that’s normally reserved for the top 1%. They run around until they fall asleep standing up, which gives us a couple hours of peace so that we can watch a show and I can write this post.
It’s amazing — my long desire to have the best of both worlds — live in my true home, but maintain my career in the city could finally come true. Instead, I’ve come to realize that we can get the best out of life staying right where we are.
Timer Done. No editing. Just copy and paste.
[1] This statement infers that a) cities are not the most beautiful places in the world, b) many people have the ability to go and live somewhere else that is not their primary residence during normal times, and c) people still have careers to maintain. These inferences are not based in reality or factual accurate. These inferences are not meant to generalize all experiences during COVID, but to illustrate something that I am experiencing.
