I Quit New York

Cameron Carling, 38, left to pursue a dream life in Costa Rica. Then he quit that, too.

Interview by

Jan. 20, 2020

I moved to New York in 2007 from Los Angeles, where I had been living after college at U.C.L.A. You show up in New York for a week in September, and you’re like, This is the most magical goddamned place on the planet. This is where all of the things are happening in the world.

I had no job, and figured that New York would just provide for me, and it nearly didn’t. I was on the verge of running out of borrowed money when I landed a job at a huge tech company via a temp agency. That turned into a full-time gig, and I ended up working there for 11 years.

I met my wife, Marcella, two weeks after I arrived, at a party. New York was awesome as a couple with no kids. We would go to outdoor movies in Bryant Park, see the symphony in Central Park.

But after a decade or so, I started to burn out. Part of it was that my wife and I had two kids and we were living in an 1,100-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn. It’s a common refrain, but trying to raise a kid in New York is like growing an oak tree in a thimble.