Help! I Define Myself By My City Life
Dear Bintel Brief,
I’ve spent the past 7 years living in New York City. Like many New Yorkers, I am a transplant originally from a small town in a flyover state. Living here was always my dream, and it offers tremendous opportunity. Food, culture, and interesting people and ideas are at my fingertips here, and there are numerous jobs in my field of employment. However, as all New Yorkers and big city dwellers know, living in an urban center is not always easy. It is competitive, expensive, crowded, and noisy. Lately I find that I am often on edge. I often consider what I imagine would be the “simpler life” elsewhere, but I can’t seem to picture myself as someone who lives somewhere other than New York City, as it is how I’ve come to define myself and my life.
How can I get over defining myself by my urban existence? Should I get over myself and just move somewhere easier? Or should I give up on leaving all together, and reside myself to my city life?
AFRAID TO LEAVE CITY LIFE
Ariel Levy responds:
Dear Afraid,
A good friend of mine says that people’s fantasy lives are always worse than their real lives. I have no idea if he’s right, but just in case, why not give country living a try before you give up on the city that you’ve made home? Summer’s coming. Now’s the time to look into renting a little cottage in the (still affordable) Hudson Valley, maybe even on a lake. (Check out Lake Oscawana in Putnam Valley. I rented a house there one summer and loved it, though I was bored by the end and glad I hadn’t given up my apartment.) You can sublet your apartment in the city and commute into work on Metro North. After a couple months of this, you’ll have a good idea of whether the pastoral idyll you crave is as satisfying in practice as it is in theory.
New Yorker staff writer Ariel Levy has profiled the intersex South African runner Caster Semenya, the fashion designer Marc Jacobs, the director Nora Ephron, and Cindy McCain, wife of former Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain. Previously, Levy wrote for New York magazine for more than decade. Her work has been anthologized in “The Best American Essays” and “The Best American Crime Reporting.” Levy is the author of “Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture” (Free Press, 2005).
If you have a question for the Bintel Brief, email [email protected]. Selected letters will be published anonymously. New installments of the Bintel Brief, featuring Ariel Levy, will be published Mondays at www.forward.com..
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.