The New Chapter in Chicago

From London to Chicago…

I moved to Chicago! If you’ve follow me on Instagram, you’re not new to this news as it’s been several months now. Things got a bit hectic as I onboarded new clients, planned a trip to India, and experienced all the shenanigans of moving in between. This is my first time living in an unfurnished flat (or should I say apartment), so planning and organizing took a lot longer than my flat life in London. I had a couple of questions from readers and lots of questions from friends and family asking why Chicago? Well, there were a couple of reasons. Let’s dive in!

In the Middle

Logisitically speaking, Chicago just made a lot of sense for someone who works with clients across the US. Dealing with teams spead across California to NYC, it makes the one hour difference on either side a bit easier to handle. Now that things have opened up and travel is kind of going back to normalcy, it makes quick client trips easier on me as well. This might be a ridiculous reason to choose a place to live, but coming from a country that was incredibly small, it made the transition a little less intimidating.

Community

One thing I struggled a lot with in London and continued to until the very end was building a quality community around me. I wrote about this extensively in my life in London series. The other factor is that London is very transient, so people move in and out of the city. With that in mind, I craved a place that surrounded me with people I knew or had a connection with. Looking back, I realized all the places I lived were places I didn’t have any former connections. So being around some friendly faces felt comforting to me.

The Pace

London is not as fast-paced as you might think it is-speaking strictly about personal life-it’s one of the slower of dynamic cities to live in. As someone who worked in the tech industry there, I craved the energy that Silicon Valley boasts. A friend of mine who conducts exeutive interviews for Thrive Global said that oftentimes, British and European executives would spend years at American companies and try to replicate the energy in the UK or Europe. The result often didn’t transfer over. So, even though I considered myself out of norm when it came to pace, I still felt overwhelmed by the energy in cities like NYC. Chicago had that balance of the Midwest.

After living here for several months now, I haven’t fully transitioned into the Chicago lifestyle. I’m still learning about places, finding my favorites, and trying to understand the culture a bit more. It has been a city that has been incredibly warm and welcoming, and I hope to document a bit of this chapter just how I did when I lived in London.