Where the Journey Began
I left Manhattan in October of last year because the heyday of the real estate industry was on its downward slide. I had been laid off at the end of 2008 from a real estate brokerage house after the stock market crash the same year. Manhattan real estate or so it was said was isolated from the rest of the country's woes, but it wasn't so. I don't think it has found its bottom yet, especially in Manhattan. I was offered a job at a public relations agency that shall remain nameless for its owner could have played the lead role of the Devil Wears Prada without coaching. Having heard about her reputation as a hard woman to work for, I took the job reluctantly. And soon after I was miserable. As the real estate industry in New York continued its descent, she started losing business almost immediately and began threatening layoffs. She had already cut the staff back to four-day work weeks, and I had taken a $55,000 pay decrease to take the job. So I took that as the final blo