why am i moving to new york?

towards intentionality | a letter for future me

I'm writing this letter for two people: the 25-year-old version of me, and anyone who feels like they're waiting to live their fullest life. I hope that the future me will find comfort in knowing that not only would he achieve what he set out to do, but that his definition of a full life would evolve into something far richer than he could imagine.

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Hey Future Steve,

I'm calling this chapter 'The Beginning of the Rest of Your Life' - a phrase I encountered somewhere in literature or film that captures exactly what this moment feels like. When I told mom and dad that I’m moving to New York, it finally felt that I was living the life I’ve always wanted. So much of my upbringing was about chasing financial stability — or at least that’s what I told myself. For the first time in my life, I feel that I’m living my most honest, authentic version of life.

The last year has felt fast. I’ve put a lot of thought into why this might be. A friend told me it’s simply because our brains processes time faster as we grow up. I want to believe it's because we don't have enough new experiences - that the more routine life becomes, the more we're just going through the motions. To counter this, I optimized for novelty, taking over 40 collective Amtrak Trains/flights to and from New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Mexico City, believing that new experiences can make time slow down.

See the funny thing is, this year still flew by. I still had countless days that felt monotonous. It’s December and even though I can look back at my Photos app and relive the numerous new memories I’ve made, novelty hasn’t felt like enough.

I tell people this all the time — I write to try to answer life’s biggest questions and when it came to my travels, I was obsessed with answering:

When you remove novelty, what makes something exciting?

This question led me to realize something unexpected: perhaps the answer isn't in chasing novelty at all — but rather, to stop putting off the future. I wanted to write this to the older version of myself to crystalize the idea that I am living the life future me wants, today. For instance, it’s felt like everyone who knows me already thought I lived in New York. It’s like everyone besides me thought it was clear I belonged there and for good reason, I couldn’t finish one conversation with someone without telling them about how much I loved my most recent trip to New York or how I was thinking of moving there sometime soon.

Well that time is finally now. The future is the present and there’s nothing I’ve written in the last year that’s felt as powerful and fitting as what I just wrote. I can do the things I want to do in the future, today.

I love that I can finally tell people with the wholeness of my heart and with purpose in my tone that I’ll be moving to the city I’ve always wanted to live in, not just visit. There's a new confidence in my voice when I talk about my writing, about how we're all wrestling with life's big questions. I love that I can say I love the pressure the city and my friends there make me feel.

The beauty of New York is that this pressure demands intention. Yes, everyone is busy with their morning pilates, their 9-to-5s and their curated dinner experiences but this challenge excites me. This leads me to trying to find the answers to these questions. How can I create experiences so meaningful that people make them a consistent part of their lives? How can I bring such strong purpose and value to my relationships that they become priority rather than afterthought?

I've been reading Charlie Munger's Almanack, where he preaches making a small series of large bets when you have conviction in a financial investment. This philosophy resonates beyond just finance – I'm ready to make my own concentrated bets on the life I want to create in New York.

When people ask me why I want to move to New York, I tell them about the cafes and tea houses I envision hosting in my apartment. It’s not just about the espresso machine I buy or serving nice matcha/hojicha — it's about intentionally creating moments where people pause their rushed lives to truly be present. In a city where everyone's calendar is triple-booked, I want to craft spaces that make people want to slow down, to savor not just the drinks, but the conversations that unfold around them.

The city's energy aligns perfectly with my desire to live intensely outside my career. But this intensity isn't about constant motion — it's about purposeful creation. Beyond my digital work, I see myself venturing into physical crafts that demand presence: shaping lighting that transforms spaces, making clothes that tell stories, folding origami that requires patience and precision. In New York's stream of endless possibilities, these acts of careful creation will be my anchors, my way of making sure each day contains moments of deliberate beauty. New York's creative pulse makes these aspirations feel not just possible, but inevitable.

I’m not just writing this for future Steve, but it’s for anyone who has that familiar ache of wanting more from their life. I don’t see this Substack as a blog, but rather it’s a conversation about life’s biggest questions, and it brings me a special thrill when readers tell me my words resonated with them.

This move isn't just about changing cities – it's about creating a space where I can think deeply, connect authentically, and build the future I've been dreaming about. Because the future isn't some distant point on the horizon anymore – it's the life I'm choosing to start living today.