The Big City Dream
Cool girls & guys want to live in NYC and Paris
There’s something magnetic about big cities; New York, Paris, London, Berlin. They pull you in with their noise, their pace, their promise that life could feel cinematic. These cities make you chase a version of yourself you always knew existed; the one who walks faster, dreams bigger and believes in this higher calling. Every cool girl and guy dreams of living in a city, the one that never slows down and everything seems possible, because these cities promise reinvention. They let you start over without explaining who you used to be. The energy feels like proof that you’re alive and that your story is still being written.
Walking through the new city and realizing, this is home now. Not just a place to visit, not a short escape, but a real beginning. We’ve all had those romantic thoughts of living somewhere new while on vacation, drinking wine on balconies, pretending life is a movie. But actually doing the move is something else entirely. It’s exciting, overwhelming and beautiful in ways that only those who’ve done it will understand.
Leaving behind your familiar home means saying goodbye to the comfort of knowing your way around. Your cafés, your routines, the people who made your days. The comfort of knowing a place inside out is replaced by the thrill of discovering something new every day. Big cities like Paris make you feel alive in three ways; they test you, teach you, push you. They mirror your ambition and flaws back at you. You come here for the chance to build habits from scratch, find new favorite spots and meet people who might change your life. It comes with the price of closing a chapter, leaving behind not just people you love, but the version of yourself that belonged to the past.
At first, everything feels unreal. The rhythm of daily life, the way people speak, the smallest things like how the metro works and which line to avoid. You learn, adapt, absorb. The city becomes your teacher: impatient and brutally honest. Every day feels like a dopamine hit of discovery. But slowly, almost without noticing, the unknown becomes routine. The streets that once confused you start to guide you. The barista starts remembering your order. The big city begins to soften. What used to feel huge now feels personal. You start to recognize the sounds, the shortcuts, the light at certain hours. You’re no longer looking in from the outside. You belong here. The skyline starts feeling like a reflection of you. Not because the city simply accepted you, but because you built something permanent out of temporary desire. That’s the secret no one tells you: the city doesn’t welcome you; you earn your place in it. Day by day, heartbreak by heartbreak, rent payment by rent payment.
The days when you question the move, when job applications go unanswered, when you feel invisible in a crowd, when the loneliness hits harder than you expected, vanish in the back of your mind. You understand what the city teached you over time; to hold your own energy, to find beauty in the quiet moments, to be proud of yourself for trying. Every challenge in a big city is also proof that you’re part of it now. You’re no longer a visitor. You’re surviving the same chaos as everyone else. You realize that starting over in a big city isn’t about running away, leaving something behind and starting fresh and easy… no, it’s about expansion. You grow in directions you didn’t know existed.
Some relationships from your old home might fade, not out of bitterness but because that’s part of it all, learning when to hold on and when to move on. You don’t just leave behind a place; you leave behind a version of who you were. And in that letting go, you finally make space for who you’re becoming. You’re not running anywhere. You’re aligned, no longer just chasing a version of yourself, but living as her. The Big City Dream isn’t about escape; it’s about arrival. About turning the unknown into reality. You never needed proof that it would work out, you just knew you had to try. We owe it to ourselves, to belief that life is in our own hands, that everything is possible. When we follow that feeling, move cities, start over, people will ask: What if it doesn’t work? What if you fail?
But what if everything unfolds exactly how it’s meant to? It anyways does, always in your favor. When you follow your feeling, your spirit moves before you; clearing paths, aligning people, shifting timing. The city responds to energy like that. Life opens up when you do. That’s the real secret of the Big City Dream: you don’t find yourself here, you meet the version of you that believed it was possible all along.