New Yorker Gave Up Her Job For A Life On The Beach
We’ve probably all had that fleeting moment of wanting to just ‘get away’ and live out our days on a tropical beach. Even the best of vacations can leave us salivating for more! One New Yorker recently made headlines when she gave up her life as a respected (and reasonably well-off) writer for a life on the beach. Just four years ago, Noelle Hancock bought a one-way ticket to the Caribbean and never looked back.
Hancock’s life started as typically as many Americans’: a college education that transitions seamlessly into a life-long career. While she had a ‘lovely’ apartment in New York doing a profession she enjoyed, her life came to a standstill as she started to feel a sense of disconnect and a lack of inspiration while working on publishing her memoir.
“I need a vacation.” This was a constant refrain in my head. I wasn’t living in the moment; I was living for some indeterminate moment in the future when I’d saved enough money and vacation days to take a trip somewhere. If you’re constantly thinking you need a vacation, maybe what you really need is a new life. But I was complacent. My life wasn’t satisfying, but it was comfortable.
While she felt ‘ridiculous’ in the beginning stages, her idea started to formulate into a solid plan as she found help connecting with a roommate and chose her newest home on the small island of St. John, lovingly known as ‘Love City’ because of the friendly locals. “I had no plan, no friends, and no clue how ridiculous I looked, festively ensembled in boat shoes and a dress celebrating the palm tree. Yet I had a strange feeling that everything would unfold as it was supposed to.”
She detached from her roots as a Yale graduate and took her first job at an ice cream parlor, eventually ending up as a bartender on the tiny tropical island. “Perhaps there was something indulgent and Peter Pan-ish about this new lifestyle. But the truth is, I was happier scooping mint chocolate chip for $10 an hour than I was making almost six figures at my previous corporate job.”
As her life adapted - and rather quickly, as she was surprised to find - she made friends and fell in love with the local lifestyle. “People gather on the beaches at dusk to watch the sunsets together. I see my friends every day. On our days off, we hike the local ruins, dive, or go boating to the nearby British Virgin Islands.”
And her thoughts for anyone else considering such a drastic change? ‘“You leap and the net will appear,” she said.
