New York City has been my home since birth

With the exception of four years at university and a few additional ones abroad, New York City has been my home since birth. Though I'm admittedly filled with dewy-eyed nostalgia for the NY of my youth, when there was still a thriving middle class and Manhattan felt more like a home and not a mall, I still love the place. But the fact is that it's been kicking my ass for the last several years, and I no longer have the will to endure. I'm tired of the struggle. (My god, I never thought I'd utter those words.)
Like many of my fellow denizens, 9/11 changed everything. The corporate lifestyle that kept me financially in the black but robbed me of my soul would no longer suffice. I knew that I wanted to do something with film, but didn't know what. A year or two as a would-be-screenwriter yielded nothing, and spending time on other people's shoots confirmed that the world behind the camera was not for me. Though I didn't realize it at the time, this blog was the first (albeit unconscious) step that would launch this whole new "thing" (for I dare not use the word career).
In December of 2005, Eugene Hernandez of IndieWire invited me to be on a panel about film blogging along with IFC's Alison Willmore, Karina Longworth (then of Cinematical), Aaron Dobbs, Stu VanAirsdale, and Michael Koresky. Heady days indeed, when most of us were still trying to figure things out, and old media flippantly dismissed us with a wave of their print-will-never-die hands. Though I can recall very little about the panel itself, that was the night that changed everything