My Next Grand Adventure: Moving from Orlando to Newark (and Reinventing My Writing Career)

I decided to leave Writer’s Atelier at the end of June 2024, blissfully unaware that it would be the least ground-shaking change of my summer.

It’s not that I wasn’t happy as WA’s “admin.” (“Admin” because, as the founder will tell you, I happily wore many other hats. I invented a good number of them for the fun of it.) I loved the work and believed in the company. That job helped inform who I was as a writer and the role I played in the Orlando writing community, and I was deeply proud of the work I put in.

Recently, however, I felt the pull towards story coaching become too strong to ignore, and I couldn’t work on that while I was still so heavily involved with WA. It wouldn’t be fair to me, WA’s founder Racquel, WA’s audience, or my story coaching clients to split my time that way. Not to mention my own creative projects, which are almost always the first things I neglect when I get busy.

If I dreamed of becoming a full-time story coach—and I definitely did—leaving WA was the right choice. Little did I know that I’d made that choice in the nick of time, because if I’d known what was coming, I would’ve clung fast to the safe and familiar like my sanity depended on it.

The Call to Adventure

Four days after I gave Racquel my six months’ notice—during which I told her nothing needed to change yet, the Write Brave Challenge was still on, and that I’d work hard to make sure she had plenty of content for WA to burn through while she looked for my replacement—my partner Logan called to ask me how I felt about New Jersey.

“Why?” The question scraped its way out of my closing throat. I already knew what he was going to say.

“So you know how I’ve been applying for jobs?” I did know that, but that was way in the back of my mind. “Well, they offered me one in Newark. What do you think?”

I told him we should go for it, even as I was bracing myself for what had always come after news like this: rejection and redirection. Logan had been trying to get his foot in the door in the world of tech for ages, and it had been his lifelong dream to move to New York. With this job, we’d be an hour out from the city, and it sounded too good to be true. We’d had jobs and radical lifestyle changes dangled in front of us half a dozen times already. Every one of them was yanked away with little more than a two-line email.

But no. This time wasn’t like the others. The day after Logan was extended the offer, he signed a contract, and all of a sudden, my days in Florida were numbered.

Really? Adventure?

Those numbered days started to blur together immediately. For that first weekend, we were comatose, unable to do so much as pack a suitcase. Only the pressure of a ticking clock eventually pushed us to do what needed to be done: finding an apartment; giving our much-beloved, then-current jobs our emails of resignation; and taking our cat to the vet to get updated vaccines and papers to fly. We were so overwhelmed, there wasn’t time to be excited or scared or anything other than focused on the next task on the list.

All that time, friends and family we visited told me moving to New Jersey was going to be an adventure. This was, in a way, what we always wanted: to move up north. We were just a smidge to the left of where we actually hoped to end up, but that didn’t matter. Close enough, they said. We just had to survive this whirlwind of chaos and stress, and we’d be rewarded with adventure.

And then my last in-person write-in with Writer’s Atelier rolled around. Racquel announced to the attendees that I was leaving, and something about hearing it from someone else’s mouth made the reality of my situation snap into disorienting focus. I was leaving the city I’d called home for nine years, the state I’d lived in my entire life, and the local writing community that embraced me from the moment I entered WA’s old studio.

All my writing friends in attendance echoed that word, adventure, as I failed to hold back tears. They’d all signed a card with sweet messages wishing me luck, and Racquel gifted me an art print from her sister’s shop. My nerves were frayed and my social battery was drained, so I couldn’t conceal my heartbreak over everything and everyone I was leaving behind.

Adventure-shmadventure. I wanted time to stop, or to at least slow down a little and let me catch my breath. I needed another month. I needed to think and make more solid plans and procure thousands more dollars to hire out all the moving jobs I desperately didn’t want to do.

I wanted to stay in Orlando.

The List I Needed to Make

Time marched forward, dragging me by the scruff of my neck as I struggled to find footing. Phone calls, emails, making a million decisions about which items to include in which box and which box goes into the car or stays behind until it can be brought up later—there was seemingly no end. I stopped writing because it was too easy to use it to procrastinate.

Mercifully, I still had the twenty-two hours a week I worked as a phone call captionist. I know for most people that sounds like hell, but my brain practically purrs while I’m correcting captioned speech in real time, and I made sure my last day was as close to our move-out date as possible for that reason.

Another reason? We were permitted to use pen and paper between phone calls. Before the move, I used the time to hand-write fiction, blog posts, Instagram captions, lists, and whatever else popped into my head.

Unsurprisingly, the mental strain of the move didn’t exactly allow my creativity to flourish. As much as I wanted to escape into my imaginary worlds, I just couldn’t with everything still on my mind.

So, after exhausting all other productive topics, I made a new, mindless list: “Writery/Bookish Things I Want to Do Post-Move.”

Then the Floodgates Opened

It was the first time I ever thought about the after of the move. I remembered that Logan insisted I take a break from everything for a couple weeks before looking for a new job, and I’d get to spend that time however I wanted (after unpacking, of course).

Writing. Returning to neglected creative projects. Decorating my writing space. Working on my website. Nurturing my story coaching business. Getting a library card. I could do anything.

That list became a blog post, and it spurred me to create other, similar lists about the things I wanted to accomplish in New Jersey. There were actually tons of reasons to be excited for this move. I was going to be right next to New York City, one of the largest literary hubs in the world! Think of the writing groups I could join, the connections I could make, the things I could learn, the infinitesimally small moments in this new home that my mind would eventually distill onto the page!

After this move, I would find my footing again, redesign my routines, and create a new life for myself alongside my favorite person in the world and our sweet cat.

Maybe adventure was the right word after all.

Interested in my upcoming adventures?

I can’t wait to see what the future has in store. If you can’t either, sign up for my newsletter to stay up to date on everything I have in the works!