Where It Will Be Much

Her name was Jules.

She had lived in New York City for thirteen years, long enough to memorize the timing of the subway's last screech through Brooklyn, and short enough to still wonder if she'd ever “made it.” She was a ghostwriter for memoirs, which meant she spent her days turning other people’s stories into meaningful sentences. But her own narrative? It had become a string of unfinished drafts and overexposed Polaroids taped to a fridge that hadn’t worked in months.

The decision wasn’t dramatic. There was no big fight. No tragic loss. Just a moment.

One night, walking down Bedford Avenue, Jules saw a girl dancing alone with her headphones in. The girl didn’t care who watched. She twirled in the spill of a streetlamp, eyes closed, lost in her music. Jules stood there frozen. That freedom—reckless, unapologetic, alive—it was something Jules couldn’t remember the last time she felt. She’d been in a city full of people chasing dreams but had forgotten to chase her own.

Later that night, she opened a blank document on her laptop. Not for a client, not for a deadline. exclusively for her. At the top, she typed:

She stared at the screen for a long time.

She thought of Portland, of her grandmother’s porch in Savannah, of a small town in Iceland where strangers left their doors unlocked. But every time she tried to fill in the blanks, it felt wrong. It wasn’t about the location. It was about the letting go. The beginning again. The possibility that somewhere, even nowhere, could be much ... anything.

She booked a one-way ticket. There is no destination, only a path. Packed a single suitcase. Left her apartment keys with the landlord and a note for her neighbor: “Keep the plants. They like jazz.”

Before she left, she visited a tattoo parlor in the East Village she’d passed a thousand times but never entered. She showed the artist her laptop screen.

"You want the blanks?" the artist asked.

"Yes," she said. "I want it unfinished."

He paused, then smiled. “Bold.”

As the needle buzzed and ink met skin, Jules felt something shift. Pain, yes—but also release. This wasn’t a map. It was a declaration.

Years later, in a café in Lisbon, someone would ask her about the tattoo.

"You never completed it?" they’d say, pointing to the faint words on her arm.

Jules would smile, stirring sugar into her espresso. "I complete it every day." That was the truth.

She had lived in towns where people still mailed letters and in cities with red roofs and salt air. She had learned to cook, been in and out of love, and to be alone. She’d written her own name on the cover of a book.

The line had followed her, not as a destination, but as a compass.

Each day, she chose where to go. She decided what "much" meant every day. And in that, she found everything.

Jules, a ghostwriter living in New York City, decides to leave the city after realizing she’s lost touch with her own dreams. Inspired by a stranger dancing freely in the street, she writes a personal sentence: “I’m leaving New York and moving to ___ where it will be much ___.”—but intentionally leaves it unfinished. She gets the sentence tattooed on her arm as a symbol of open-ended possibility and sets off on a journey with no fixed destination. Over time, Jules lives in various places, rediscovers herself, and fills in the blanks each day with new experiences. The tattoo becomes a reminder that her life is her own evolving story.