Here are two stories from today’s Times that, taken together, illustrate the tension between wanting to be in New York and missing what you’ve left behind:

Mr. Schlesinger’s songs are also born from what may be the most widely shared trait among New Jersey kids, a sort of suburban inferiority complex. “In high school I felt vaguely inadequate when I was in New York,” he said. “In my perception, the city kids had a certain attitude that was based on nothing more than being raised there.”

– from a piece about the allure Manhattan holds for New Jersey teens (a feeling I remember well).

And:

Every New Yorker needs a break from the city. Some escape to Central Park, some drive to the country on weekends, some summer in the Hamptons. Here’s what I do. I take a trip to an electronic simulation of my childhood home, with robotic versions of my high school friends, all controlled and viewed while I sit in front of my computer at my apartment on the Lower East Side.

– from a piece about using The Sims to escape from New York.