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Ah. I filled my newsletter subscribers in on this big life update, but now it’s time to spill the beans on the blog. P.S., I share exclusive content for my weekly newsletter subscribers, and I never spam you, so you should totally sign up for it!
As many of you know, I’m moving out of Philly at the end of the month. Writing this reminds me that I really need to get a move on with packing! I moved to Philly in the first place because I was just kind of tired of D.C. I grew up in the D.C. ‘burbs, I left for school, and came back right after college graduation. While I had fun exploring D.C. as an adult, I just wanted to shake things up — and since I’m lucky enough to blog full-time, I can pretty much live anywhere I please.
Well, about 2 weeks before I moved to Philadelphia, I met a guy. Who happened to live in Virginia. D’oh. A little over a year later, we’re still together (he hasn’t gotten tired of me yet, hah!) We’ve been making this whole distance thing work over the past year, but at this point, we’re over it. We wanted to move to the same city.
Not to mention: Philly hasn’t been the best for my blog career. You never know what you have until it’s gone, right? In D.C., my schedule was packed with media events nearly every night, and I got to network with huge tourism boards and some of my favorite national brands when they came to town. A lot of these brands just weren’t hosting events or media activations in Philly, so I definitely had to adjust (and sometimes, just suck it up and travel to D.C.) over the last year.
Even though I was tired of D.C., I proceeded to look up apartments in Northern Virginia. And I got fed up with the prices, and at the reality that I would be sitting in the worst traffic of my life if I moved back. Not to mention: over the last year, I’ve come to realize that a lot of those ~fancy~ blog events in D.C. I attended so frequently really weren’t worth the trip. Sometimes the networking with brands was amazing, other times, I would just see the same 15-20 bloggers at events over and over again and not meet anyone new. I wasn’t really missing out on that much. However, Tom was willing to explore the idea of packing up his life and moving to the D.C. area.
I was visiting Tom in Charlottesville about 2 months ago, and we were at a festival. A brand new apartment complex was handing out flyers during the festival, and we casually decided to take a look the next day. Y’all: I fell in love. It immediately felt like home. It was well within my budget, brand-new, is more than twice the size of my current space. We toured a few other places around town, but that first apartment was the one. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I even tried to force myself to look at more apartments in Northern Virginia, but I knew my heart wasn’t into it.
I was hesitant to move to Charlottesville because it’s not as big of a city that I’m accustomed to. No, those big national brands will not be hosting media events in my new city — but I’m okay with commuting to D.C. 4-5 times a month to network with them (it’s roughly a 2-hour commute, give or take). No, I’m not going to be near a huge airport, but I’ll be saving a ton of money in rent, it will all even out. There’s not a Nordstrom in town, but I’ll live. Who am I even kidding? I hate shopping IRL. Online shopping ftw!
As a disclaimer: I will temporarily be living in D.C. for about 1.5 months while I’m ready for construction to wrap up in my new place. This is a major change for me. Like, really big. This will, without a doubt, be the smallest city I’ve ever lived in (but don’t worry: there will be tons of tourists that will add to the local population at all times!) However, it felt right in my heart. Cheers to more Virginia Wine, a bit of a slower pace of living, and getting a massive apartment of my dreams!
