Don't Look Down

After escaping the impossibly tall skyscrapers of midtown, this year I relocated (professionally) to the East Village. Every morning I pass the same dry cleaner(s), coffee shop, weird pashmina store & the infamous Beauty Bar. It only took me about 3 months with this routine to realize I only ever look at the same dry cleaner(s), coffee shop, weird pashmina store & the infamous Beauty Bar. Despite having moved onto greener (or at least shorter) building pastures, I'm missing everything above eye level.

Visiting New York is an architectural delight. Each borough, neighborhood & building has its own unique, detailed character and living history. Residing in New York, however, leads one to see the neon signs on the first floor and the black trash bags on the corner. Somehow, in this city of always looking ahead, we forget to look up.

now with 75% more better!

A kindly friend just tried to post encouraging comments for me based on my last post. She didn't notice, however, that it was written almost one year ago. Shame on me. I think the reason I stopped "blogging" (if you will...oh, I will) is for the most part, I stopped struggling.

Once I stopped getting coffee for executives while researching food stamp options on the side, I thought I had nothing left to write about. As it turns out, the journey really is as important as the destination, but, as another kindly friend pointed out, there's a lot of meat in what happens in living (not just struggling toward) that good 'ol American dream.

So, with that (and with my new & improved life & general outlook) I renew my vows to you Mister Blog.

Ladders...and lots of Shoots

I can't remember how often friends and strangers have quoted Sinatra's famed line: "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere". In fact, I've heard it so many times, anywhere is starting to sound pretty damn good. One of the problems with "making it" in New York is that progress is almost unmeasurable.

Not only will you constantly be trumped by the inevitable advantages of the rich and famous (nepotism, plastic surgery, whatever you want to call it), but the standards are ever changing. Brooklyn is the new Manhattan, heels are out and flats are in, hell, riding the subway might even become cool now that you have to make over 30k a year to afford it.

Making it here is like baking a cake in a vortex. You think you have a simple recipe requiring only time and elbow grease, but when you look back to check the measurements, the rules have completely changed, the oven temperature is too hot and you brought the wrong ingredients!

When I moved to NYC, I brought my "A" game; an applicable degree from one of the best Journalism schools in the country, the humbleness required to sleep on the floor of a shit-hole apartment for the first 6 months and enough willpower to get me through a few years acting as head footstool in a variety of media companies. I'm starting to think that, in spite of Sinatra's mantra, I brought the wrong ingredients.

The worst part is, I don't know what I'm missing. I may need to reserve a spot on the train to anywhere...



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Growing up, or something like it

This month, I celebrate my two year anniversary in NYC. When I first moved here, the 2 year mark was my arbitrary goal. If I made it for 2 whole years, I'd consider the experiment a success. Well, here I am almost 25, employed at the Cadillac of publishing companies and fully supporting myself. I'd say that's pretty damn good.

Something strange has happened though. Call it age, call it hormones...call it scary. The idea of doing certain 'grown up' things that used to, for lack of a better phrase, freak me out, now seems normal. When I walk around my neighborhood and see a little brick house, I think, hey I might like to have one of those. The idea of living with someone of the partner variety doesn't send me running for the hills either. Don't get me wrong, I still loathe children or at least the idea of them coming out of me, so that may never happen, but something has changed.

So. Two years in New York...I went from a cardboard box dresser to wanting to buy a house (presumably not made of cardboard). Maybe someday I will really be all grown up.



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Emily and Katie made me do it

Tourist for Life

This morning I had the distinct privilege of riding the B express train from Park Slope to Midtown. Aside from being an express train (the only way to fly), the B travels up and over the Manhattan Bridge, rising out of its tunnel like the sun rising over the East River. To the left is a close up view of the Brooklyn Bridge, its cables suspended over the water, dangerously assembled in a day before cars, let alone trains, were imagined to cross bridges.

While I craned my neck, shifting it into abstract arrangements in order to see this bridge out the window, I couldn't help but look at my other passengers, so calm and self-contained. There were readers, sleepers and daydreamers. They were so wrapped up in their own lives, schedules and thoughts (or working hard to escape them through novels), they didn't even SEE the Brooklyn Bridge, the sunlight dancing on the river or the captivating contrast of sprawling Chinatown graffiti pushed up against the perfectly polished financial district. I've been in NYC for almost two years and these scenes still grip me, still fill me with the kind of awe only an outsider can experience.

If it means I'll never be a New Yorker, so be it.
I don't want to miss this.


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To Be or Not to NYC

One truth I've discovered over the last year and a half: living in NY is a constant battle. The struggle, however, is no longer over resources, space, housing. It's over a dilemma. The dilemma. To be or not to NYC?

On any given day or night you can have anything you want: art, music, theater or socializing, dancing, sex. This city is the bona fide buffet which dictates guilt and remorse the times you opt out of the 'all you can eat'. At least this is what it looks like to an outsider. Yes NY boasts more options than you can shake a fork at, but for those of us who actually live here, the city is more than a free-for-all playground.

Sometimes it's 50 hour weeks in midtown, 20 degree walks to the laundromat on a Sunday morning and hour long subway rides because a cab just costs too damn much. Other times it's pure exhaustion, emotional damage or regret from poor decisions. Grocery shopping, lunch making, snow shoveling, bill paying. Just like anyone else, anywhere else, real life runs right along side all we have and do here.

Because of this, I've recently struggled with my decision on the nights I choose to stay home. Do I deserve my peace and quiet? Yes. Is it good to have some down time? Of course! But, even after rationalizing it here before god and all my (3) readers, I'm going to defy myself and start hitting the town. This bastion of culture and commerce is worth a little fatigue.

We may be running ourselves into the ground, but at least we're running the world.


Andy Sachs:
"But what if this isn't what I want? I mean what if I don't wanna live the way you live?"
Miranda Priestly:
"Oh, don't be ridiculous. Andrea. Everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be us. "

--The Devil Wears Prada (2006)



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