Between Two Cities
When living in two cities feels like living in none.
I split my time between New York and London. Two weeks here, two weeks there; sometimes ten days, sometimes twenty.
In August 2010, I was living in New York when I fell in love with a handsome guy and his charming English accent. Two years later, I left family, friends, colleagues and a rockin’ tech bloggin’ career. I moved to London to help launch one of my favorite New York based startups and to find a new place called home.
Since I began working on the Internet, the line between a personal and professional life has become increasingly blurred. Never has that been more true than now: It’s been six months since I launched a transatlantic company named audience.io. We’re based in New York and London, which requires monthly travel between the two. We’re making a living doing what we love and we’re very fortunate to work with some of the coolest companies in two of the world’s most exciting tech ecosystems.
From an outsider’s perspective, the #NyLon lifestyle is so very glamorous. Biking in Central Park, walking over Tower Bridge. Lunch with Prince Harry. Breakfast with Cuomo. Hvar one weekend, Cape Cod the next. Balthazar, Soho House and now The Ace Hotel. But for every 20-person, yay! you’re-back-in-town dinner party, there are just as many nights eating take-out Thai in a stranger’s kitchen, racking up laudatory reviews on Airbnb.
When you live in two cities and maintain digital connections to each, there is a strong sense that you are in fact living two parallel lives.
Upon arrival in a new city, emerge gracefully. Listen and learn how to navigate its soft nuances.
Know that humor won’t necessarily translate, even if you think your jokes are funny in both cities. What’s the difference between jelly and jam? (This joke actually works so much better in London where you’ll never see a crowd so shocked!)
Leading two lives may mean that you’ll need to be social twice as much, which is mentally and physically exhausting, particularly for introverts and ambiverts. Keep those half-used expensive gym memberships or find those one-week unlimited yoga deals because working out when leading a double life is the only way your body can keep up.
Put on your sneakers if only for the calorie burning benefits to negate the doubling of nights out catching up with girlfriends. For every best friend’s martini-fueled slippery get-together in Convent Garden, you are due for a bottle of Rioja and sautéed kale in Williamsburg, with some olives on the side. While the trials and tribulations of the two conversations differ in context and location, the themes are always very much aligned.
The most affecting part of traveling between two cities is bouncing between living the life of a single career woman in Manhattan and returning home to London and my loving 3-year relationship. I don’t run around town dating but I also don’t stay in bed to snuggle in the mornings, I wake up and go jogging. And I leave work without caring to check in with anyone before enjoying nights in solitude curled up with my Kindle at the Whole Foods salad bar (Yes, that’s me in the corner with wet hair reading Charles Stross.). When I get back to London I am relieved but I am also less free. We’re still finding our rhythm and recognizing the short periods of recalibration.
When I am in New York, I really miss my bicycle.But the bicycle is just the beginning. You’re always missing someone or something. And unfortunately, you have to get used to missing things; important things like friend’s birthday parties, high school reunions and my parent’s 30th wedding anniversary. You watch your friends hang out together on Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter. You think, “I could’ve been in that photo” or “I would’ve loved that dinner.”And when you miss enough moments, you‘ll start missing the invites altogether.
Living in two cities is like never ending FOMO. But often, the person I miss the most is myself.
I really love what I do and feel incredibly blessed but I am also really tired. Like, I-only-want-to-eat-kale-meditate-and-do-yoga-read-books-write-stories-and-sleep-for-a-whole-month tired. The 9-5 is dead to me. I’m an early morning riser one week and a night owl the next. You might call it permanent jet lag? In New York, I wake up to a deluge of emails. In London, I go to bed with the same. I‘ve gotten into the habit of showing to the airport 4-hours early just for the alone time in the lounge where I can chill out with my inbox, a cheese plate and catch up with my Pocket Queue.
There are a lot of other brilliant people who call New York and London home. I write about them in 3460 Miles, a bi-weekly newsletter that’s grown from 0 to over 2000 members in half a year. I asked Chris Morton, the founder of Lyst if he could live anywhere in the world where would it be and why. He said, “Living between NY and London is amazing, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now.”
I started writing this post from the Ikea table of an apartment in Soho that I rented on Airbnb after a friend forgot I was in town and stood me up for dinner (she has since apologized profusely!). I finished writing it on a flight back to London in a bit of an emotional daze.
I too am grateful that I am in a position physically, mentally and financially to travel and build a company with a vision to bring the U.S. and Europe closer together. My love of New York and London is tied so deeply to my soul and the most important facets of my life — my career, my friends, my family and my lover. Despite the bags under my eyes, I will never fully give up one for the other.
