You ask yourself: what's important to me? And you come up with answers like: walking to work; easy access to parks (for training); enough space for a couch and queen-sized bed where neither have to double as a kitchen table; natural light or at least one non-shaftway window; and price, which should be first priority because you just started a business last year and you're broke. This may seem like a reasonable list until you start actually looking at places.

I started with the East Village, because that's where I live and though I was getting somewhat tired of the bridge and tunnel kids puking on either corner of seventh street every Friday and Saturday night, and though I guessed it would never accommodate my price and size requirements, I had to get rid of the "you never know," attitude, because in the end and in a tight rental market, you know.

I spent a week or two looking at railroad apartments. Expensive ones. For $2000 a month, I could saw my couch in half, use the television for the coffee table, and still not be certain I'd be able to get into the bedroom without leaping over the television turned coffee table.

I turned to the Upper West Side. Tall trees, easy access to Central Park and the Palisades for weekend bike rides, a relatively easy commute to downtown and to Penn Station for trips to New Jersey, pristine streets (overly so) and not many markets open past nine, but still. A broker assured me I'd be able to find something in my price range. Except that something was: a one bedroom that consisted of two adjacent 8x8 rooms with the kitchen on the wall of one of those rooms (albeit a lot of light and newly renovated); a large studio with a single window that looked onto a steel air barrel of some sort and a stairwell putrid with the smell of trash; an undeniably cute studio in a high-rise elevator building, but still a studio and not cheap and in a depressing high-rise.

Brokers quickly tired of me, I quickly tired of them. As decisive as I was trying to be, I became more and more unsure and indecisive. They were showing me places I probably should have jumped on, but I couldn't. As much as I said space wasn't important, when I walked into a tiny place and tried to mentally arrange my bed and dresser and couch, I'd feel my lungs compress and throat clench. When I saw a good-sized place, I wondered if I really wanted to live on 107th Street where I knew no-one and the commute to downtown suddenly felt long and lonely.

I waffled. I waned. I panicked. I felt desperate and confused. I despaired.

And then brokers on the Upper West Side asked me if I made 40 times the rent or had a guarantor that made 80 times the rent, and the answer to both was, "No!" I felt defensive, stupid, ousted. Screw Central Park and the Upper West Side.

After weeks and weeks of crappy apartments, I considered Brooklyn.

Everyone I know who lives in Brooklyn loves it. They talk about how great it is. Constantly. And for this reason, I never wanted to live in Brooklyn. Brooklyn makes you a cheerleader for Brooklyn. How often do you hear someone living in Manhattan feel the need to extoll the wonders of Manhattan? There's no need. Because it's really great to live on the island of Manhattan. You're connected. You're there. It's all the reasons I want to live in the city in the first place.

But what it always comes down to in this city is money. And after weeks of searching, I had to face the fact that I couldn't afford the caliber of apartment I wanted and live downtown. And if I wasn't living downtown, Brooklyn seems like a better option than Times Square or Columbia University, or, ack, the Upper East Side.

The brokers in Brooklyn were strikingly and pleasantly laid back. I breathed a sigh of relief. I found a few I could talk to. They didn't hang up on me when I explained that I had a large, 70-lb dog. They showed me places that, if they weren't decent, they were very big. Too big. Most importantly, I felt like I was getting somewhere.

In the middle of the Brooklyn search, I looked at one more place in the East Village. It was on CraigList. I still hadn't given up all the hope of my old, beloved neighborhood. The place was small, but square and clean. It got a good amount of light in both the bedroom and living room. My couch would actually fit. The kitchen was a little cruddy, the bathroom worse. It was $1900 a month, still more than I wanted to spend.

I hemmed and hawed. I just couldn't decide. It was probably the apartment I had been searching for all along, but it was after I had given up the fight, when I had started dreaming about space in Brooklyn, a big apartment, an office, a real bedroom. I let it go.

I week or two later, I settled on a place in Carroll Gardens, a lovely little enclave not far from the Brooklyn Bridge. It used to be all Italians, and now it's a mix of Manhattanites raising children, thirty-something creative types and old people who sit on folding chairs in front of their buildings on hot summer nights. The apartment, big but in no way perfect. I've got a big bedroom, but it's the first room you walk into and it's open to the living room/dining room. The kitchen's small without any counter space. My office is big. Very big, and a mess right now. It's on the first floor and below the family that owns the building, which breaks two of my cardinal rules. But it's bright with loads of space and a little bit less than $1900. Now I need to get over my culture shock and acclimate to Brooklyn. #$%@#!~ Brooklyn.