Out-of-Town Advantage

Out of town may be a fantastic move for you as it has been for us

The FOMO is Real — Name Withheld

I live out of town; my kids are “out-of-towners.” For someone born and bred in New York, this statement is hard to make. I love it here, but we live here consciously by weighing the pros and cons.

The fantastic out-of-towners who wrote last week are in a bit of a different situation, having moved to guide a kehillah, to make an impact as a day school rebbi, or to bring back Klal Yisrael to Yiddishkeit. We, the accountants, nursing home administrators, actuaries, and lawyers, know that with a simple test or a license fee, we could be plying our craft in New York, near our parents and our children’s bubbies and zeidies. Since we are not living in the sticks for klei kodesh reasons or because we couldn’t hack it in New York, there is a level of guilt that weighs on some of us.

For those of us whose families live close to each other, the FOMO is real, and it is hard. Not just missing the simchahs, but even more so missing the small stuff: our kids missing Bubby taking all of the eineklach to Mendelsohn’s for pizza on a random Thursday night and the impromptu family BBQ on a lazy summer evening. Seeing those pictures on the family WhatsApp and missing those moments hurts.

Our children do not have the consistent relationship with Bubby and Zeidy that their other grandchildren do, where Bubby attends every birthday and program in their New York school and knows the ins and outs of their lives, so we struggle with the longing for our family.