Only you would know. I love the vibrancy of New York, the fact that you can get anything at any time of the day or night.

I also hate the crowding, the rents, the dirt.

I say, try something else. You could always move back if it didn’t work out. I would go somewhere where I know a few people and have some community. Otherwise, the transition may be a little harder.

Good luck.

It’s a personal choice. I find it an interesting and in many ways enjoyable place to visit, but it’s certainly not someplace I’d personally want to spend a lot of time, even if I could afford it and knew many people there, etc.

I imagine that people you know who live there just find it a surprising idea in various ways, because for example they’d like you to stay, they themselves choose to live there are/or don’t often consider moving (and/or they may themselves have buried feelings about moving that they’re avoiding considering), and/or have many entrenched ideas about why it makes sense to want to be in NYC and not leave.

I love NY – for three days at a time. I couldn’t live there. I’m surprised that anyone chooses to,

So I fully support your idea of moving.

BUT be aware that wherever it is that you move – LA, Chicago, Cleveland, whatever… it won’t be NY. Things will be different. Maybe shockingly so. Are you ready for the adjustment?

I certainly appreciate your urge to jump ship. And 23 years on the line in NY is an achievement worthy of respect. There is more than a little truth to that line in the theme song…if you can make it there…

Move to Ecuador :D

If you have lived there I would expect a move to be pretty difficult for you.
That doesn’t mean you couldn’t be happy, or successful, but it could be a bumpy ride for a while.

The things you do and don’t like have made a deeper imprint in your life than you know.
Things will be different which you don’t expect to be different.
It isn’t wrong to desire change. Changing environments can be exactly what some people need.

As several Jellies have already mentioned, you always have the option of moving back again. But, there’s something to consider – if you leave, would you be vacating a rent-stabilized apartment? Giving up affordable housing, no matter how outrageously-priced by another city’s standards, can make it difficult or impossible to return to NYC.

Noone is ever wrong for wanting something, unless they want some thing that is deplorable, immoral or illegal. Move! Go to upstate New York to a mid sized town. See what it’s like. If you moved to a small town, you’d reconnect with nature. It doesn’t seem like people in NYC get much in the way of real nature.

I would probably count out Ohio but there are some awesome places other than NYC.

Some people have trouble with transitioning from a highly urban area, to a more suburban area.

I would try to simulate some of the differences you would experience wherever you are moving. For instance, is there a mass transit system?
If not, how “car” friendly is the new city?

What do you hope to find is different outside of NYC?

Visit Boise, Idaho, or Bend, Oregon, or Denver, Colorado. Then decide. (You’ve been cooped up too long!)

Or Kansas. Wide open spaces.

When I was in college, in Manhattan, Kansas, one of my room mates was from a big city, like Chicago. She couldn’t get over the fact that to get from one town to the next, in Kansas, you had to drive through huge swaths of nothing but country and farms….she’d say, “Where are we”
“In Kansas.”
“No, I mean where are we?”
She was used to towns that had grown so that they were all connected. She couldn’t imagine not being in a town or a city at all times.

Boulder CO is quite nice. So is Ashville NC

coastal Oregon

Yeah, you can’t miss if you go to the Northwest.

Might be wrong to move. I have always wanted to live and work in Manhattan but missed my chance in 2003. I’m much older now and this sweet fantasy is fading fast and it’s making me terribly sad, unfulfilled.

But after 23 years…well that’s a lifetime. It wouldn’t be wrong to go on another adventure.