Disrupting My American Dream

I thought my personal and professional dreams could only come true in a big city. I was wrong.

If you had told me a year ago that I would have packed up my Brooklyn apartment and moved back to San Antonio with my mother, I would have laughed in your face. Throughout my life, I’ve always had a clear vision of my life’s trajectory, and moving back home was never part of it. Like so many of us partaking in the Great American Migration of 2020, I had every intention of returning to New York as soon as the threat of COVID-19 had died down. Twelve months later, we’re all still waiting for infection rates to plateau and with each passing month I have less interest in returning to the Big Apple. Like many millennial professionals of my generation, moving to a big city was a critical step in developing my career and finding my way to financial independence. But the longer I’ve spent in quarantine, the more my Millennial American Dream has shifted away from mainstream ideals of success and towards finding a happier, more sustainable middle ground.

More than anything, leaving NYC has allowed me to take a break from paying Brooklyn rents and buying overpriced groceries. No matter how much I had romanticized living in the “big city,” I never found any sort of balance during my time there. Although I have a college degree and “impressive” resumé, New York is home to thousands of twenty-somethings with the exact same profile, all fighting for the same underpaid jobs. We, the millennial fish, are getting bigger and outgrowing our hometown ponds earlier than ever before. And the more I came to terms with this reality, the more I found that smaller cities might actually offer bigger ponds than those available in New York (where you have to buy a day pass for the pond).

After months of telling myself I’d be back in New York in no time, I’ve shifted entirely to daydreaming about which small(er) city might offer the culture and quirks of New York or San Francisco without the price tag and smog. Although San Antonio probably won’t top the list of possible settings for the next “Sex and the City” reboot, all cities and towns have a romantic side. When I decided to move away for school and leave San Antonio, it was because I convinced myself that my goal to work with international, impactful nonprofits was impossible in a “small” city. I was sure that the only way to make meaningful change was to work with big-budget organizations doing large-scale, high-profile community development, never taking the time to understand the importance and power of small local organizations. In working with Friday, I’ve witnessed the many ways in which smaller local foundations are creating change and having a direct impact on their communities, whether through environmental grant-making or LGBTQ+ activism. In working with smaller organizations first-hand, I’ve gained a fuller appreciation for the different forms that activism can take, all of which contribute to progress as a larger community. Some of us are on the front lines, helping vaccinate communities and protesting injustices, while others are behind the scenes, integrating social justice into their curriculum and helping their communities find the resources they need to educate themselves on those same issues.

In leaving New York and joining the Millennial move away from big city life, I disrupted the cookie-cutter future I envisioned for myself as a child, and I was forced to reconsider what actually contributes to my everyday happiness. I am incredibly privileged to have a job that is completely remote, leaving me with the freedom to choose where I work and avoid the stresses of quarantine in a large city. But even with that added security, I still find myself scrutinizing my work with Friday and my hometown life, comparing it to the life I imagined for myself in Brooklyn. It’s incredibly difficult to move past the deeply ingrained belief that anyone with true ambition must live in a big city to find success. But with time, I’m starting to understand what professional success and happiness can look like in different settings and reconstructing my own personal American Dream.

In San Antonio, I was reunited with $2 breakfast tacos and quick escapes to the river, two things that were hard to find in New York. Although some might call these things inconsequential, they speak to the larger ways smaller communities offer affordability and sustainability. In less than a year, my personal American Dream has evolved significantly, leaving behind Brooklyn Brownstones in favor of neighbors who have known me since I was in braces and community organizing in the city that first sparked my love for social justice — and that’s romantic, too.

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