It seems impossible but yesterday marked the start of the 10th year since I moved back to Peoria after living in New York City for nineteen years.
This whole period is documented on my blog, Tripping With Marty. Let’s take a stroll back in time and see what I was doing ten years ago.
——
September 24, 2012
On this date I made the announcement on my blog that I had decided to move back to my hometown of Peoria, Illinois. I had lost my night job, couldn’t find another one and realized that everything I had wanted to accomplish by moving to New York had been achieved.
When I first moved there I did a lot of freelance writing including feature articles for the NY Daily News, the NY Post, NY Newsday and Time Out New York magazine.
I wrote and published a magazine that ridiculed the world of mainstream magazines and newspapers called fishwrap from 1994 to 2000. The magazine became a cult hit and got written up in Spin magazine, Sassy magazine, the NY Post, the NY Daily News, Men’s Journal, the Chicago Tribune and USA Today among other publications.
In 2010, I left the world of print and started blogging. My blog, A Guy Walks Into 365 Bars got international attention after the NY Daily News wrote about it and then the U.P.I. wire service picked up the story and put it on an international wire. That resulted on the story going world-wide and I was interviewed via satellite in Australia for the Morning Show, which is their version of the Today Show.
After that I did a blog called, Marty After Dark and then Tripping With Marty, which takes us up to this date in time over ten years ago.
Click on the link below to read the post where I told everyone I was leaving New York to move back to Peoria.
——
October 8, 2012
My parents had a trip scheduled to visit me that they had made before I made the decision to move back to Peoria. They wondered if they should cancel the trip, since I was moving back in a couple of weeks and I told them they should still come out and we could have a good time while I was still living in New York.
This is the last time the three of us were in New York City together.
A Walk To Midtown To Visit With My Mom and Dad
—-
October 15, 2012
The movers came on this day and picked up the boxes and my furniture to haul them back to Peoria, Illinois.
The reality that I was leaving New York and moving back to Peoria really hit me on the day.
—-
October 18, 2012
When I moved to New York in the summer of 1993, I remember looking out of the airplane window and thinking, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Nineteen years later as I was moving back to Peoria, I remember taking these photos while thinking, “What the fuck are you doing?”
——
December 10, 2012
Well, I moved back, got a job and on December 10th, 2012 I hit “publish” on the very first post for my new Peoria blog, “Meanwhile, Back in Peoria…”
A lot of people told me that I wouldn’t be able to sustain a blog here in Peoria and I had no idea what would happen. I knew that if the blog tanked, it would be bad. I thought if I was lucky, I could do it for a year or two and then move on to something else.
In the beginning more people from New York were reading it, but then slowly the tide turned and I’m thrilled that it’s almost the 10th anniversary of Meanwhile, Back In Peoria.
If you’re reading this, I sincerely want to thank you from the bottom of my freeze-dried heart! I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have an audience, so if you read the blog, you’re a huge part of this and you don’t know how much I appreciate you tuning in!
Through the blog I’ve met and made so many new friends and reconnected with friends and people from my past.
Thanks to all of you who read and are part of this blog!
And now…on to the next ten years!
——
Related Posts: Marty Womblogger, Part One and Marty Womblogger, Part Two.