Rachel Boyman Headed Home for Yom Kippur

Look for Rachel Boyman, 28, on Orchard Lake Road this weekend. She's headed home for Yom Kippur. "I love the familiarity of it," she says of coming back to West Bloomfield. "I'll never be able to replicate that anywhere else."

Boyman, who left for New York City in 2004 and now works for Fox News in social media strategy and mobile/video content, says she looks forward to running into people she knows while she's in. Also on the to-do list: visit family and friends, her dentist, Coney Island, and the cider mill, if she can help it, she says.

"Home is family and everyone being in the same place," she says. "And of course, I miss driving."

Her travels have taken her to Chicago for graduate school at Northwestern University and back to New York, where she says she appreciates the diversity in perspective and priorities. City living promotes a focus on "figuring out who you are and what you want," she says.

Still, from family to lifestyle, she says there are a lot of trade-offs. People ask how she can take public transportation, live in New York, and handle the day-to-day stresses, she says. But on the flip side, in New York City "you wouldn't have to shovel your driveway or go outside and turn the car on and wait for it to warm up."

She has brought with her to the city the willingness to help an extended network of people, such as the kids she used to babysit for who are now out scouring for internships. And while living in New York, she says she has learned to be open to new experiences and new people. "I couldn't imagine living somewhere else now, at this point in time."

That said, she notes it's different starting with work friends and building from a new foundation. "You kind of have to get used to doing holidays in the city and long weekends, and you sort of have to create a little home away from home."