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But not every New Yorker is so curious. “So,” the others ask, “when are you moving back?” If this were Chicago or Austin, I would be honest and tell them that I’m not. But telling New Yorkers I have no desire to move back seems rude, an affront to their tenacity. I get the sense that they have a lot invested in the outcome of my decision to decamp, as if my return would be their vindication—proof that everything they believe about New York is right. So I say that I haven’t really left, I’m just commuting, and that appears to satisfy them. “Oh,” they say, all sympathy, “commuting—that’s such a hassle.”
