Exploring new cities like religions
How visiting new cities is like exploring different religions:
1. You have to be okay with leaving what you know, at least temporarily. If you’re looking for new cities to move to, it’s valuable to ask why your current city isn’t meeting your wants/needs and what else you’re looking for. If you’re not cool with the religion you were born into (or that you weren’t born into one at all), you need to start with why.
2. It’s helpful to have a general sense of what you desire in a city, but the beauty of just jumping into a new place is how you surprise yourself by falling in love with things, people, and ideas that you had not considered valuable before. You end up loving things you never knew you needed.
3. You’ll imagine yourself as part of the new city, just like you might try to envision yourself as a member of this new belief system. Whether you’ll move to the new city depends on how well your beliefs and values jive with it.
4. You’ll realize what keeps you in your home city goes deeper than what attracts you — are you okay with leaving anything that might be tying you back? Leaving a tradition that you experienced with your family?
5. You’ll probably compare the new city to your current home countless times, as evidenced by “I wish Chicago had ___ or offered ____.” (My blanks would be filled in by the words “random pianos on Michigan Avenue” and “a free shuttle up and down the main street” respectively). You’ll also realize that your city offers things that this new city might not have.