……..Or maybe I should say Old City time?
I left my hometown twenty years ago and I haven’t been back for more than a vacation/visit since. Yet after the turn of life at the end of 2023 I found myself vacating Florida for good and returning to the north!
Because of my day time job I never thought it would be possible for me to have my career in my hometown because we just didn’t have the market for the level of restaurants that I work at. But man, things have changed so MUCH!!!!!
And it’s a wonderful thing to see. 🥳
It’s also amazing getting to be so close to all my family again. I love getting to see them when I want, instead of having to plan out only a few hours with them on a short trip.
I do miss some things about FL. My dear friends from down their chief among them. But that’s the way life goes, even in a new city. It seems impossible to have everything at one time.
The other thing that it’s done for me is that I’ve noticed a shift in how I prioritize and think about things in my life. In good ways.
The job I accepted when I moved back home is with a medium-large restaurant company, as their corporate pastry chef, and we are about to open an amazing restaurant, the likes of which you would only see in NYC, Vegas or LA. And man is it stressful!!! Yet compared to the stress from the last several years in FL, this feels amazing. The next three months are going to be absolutely mad, but I find I get more and more excited for it every day.
Funny how I’m realizing I’m actually happy only after leaving the happiest place on earth……
Talk about surprising facts of life in a new city.
One thing that is not so great about being back home, is that there is nowhere that I can go to get a REALLY GOOD K-pop fix 😭! It’s really hard and makes me want to spend more buying things from online stores 😶
The other thing that the changes from this last few months has done is make me want to dive head first back into my author world. And I’m realizing just how many WIP’s I have anxiously waiting to see the light of day.
Guess it’s time I really find a way to get them what they want, huh? HAHAHA
And I better go do that now, so peace out for now 🫰
💖 always L.H. Nicole
