My original relocation goal was to be a Reverse Weekender: I’d live within a 2-hour drive to Brooklyn, spending my weekdays creating my art + wellness + farming + self-sufficient homestead and my weekends immersing myself in Brooklyn culture.

But the plan wasn’t to do it alone.

And now that I am by myself in this, I’m back at the beginning, unsure of what to do next.

But it’s not entirely for that reason.

When I finally figured out (and made peace with the idea) that I no longer wanted to live an urbanite’s life, but also didn’t want to completely disconnect from it either, the most obvious choice was to move to the Hudson Valley region of New York State. It’s where all my farmer friends are and all my city-dweller-turned-beginning-farmers were escaping NYC for, so naturally, going where I knew I’d have community made the most sense.

But now that I’m unattached, my self-diagnosed Only Child Syndrome has resurfaced and I am not enthusiastic about the communal living offers that have been sent my way.

And then there’s this contract position I have right now that’s contingent on me having a specific geographic base. NYC/Long Island, specifically.

My contract expires in May, but I have until March 15^th to decide if I want to stay on. It’s not a well-paying contract but it has the possibility to become that, and there are a host of other benefits that come with it, namely, access to people and resources that will help me professionally and personally.

But I don’t want to live in NYC proper anymore, so, what to do?

My new option now is to explore moving to Long Island, but it’s incredibly prohibitive and I don’t know the food, farming, and wellness community there. And that’s really sad, considering I live on Long Island, technically.

And it only occurred to me a couple of weeks ago at a farming conference just how disconnected I was from a region that was just as close and easy to get to parts of lower Hudson Valley is.

So, I’ve got to figure out what my next moves are, as I will blink and March 15^th will be looking at me square in the face.

I’ve always wanted to live in close proximity of a really nice beach, Long Island has several, and there are farms within a half-hour’s drive to one.

But how to make this work – living the way I want to live, with a good amount of open land to work with, a community of like-minded folk, and doesn’t choke me financially?

I’m running out of time on this one.