New York, New York

This piece of writing will showcase an ongoing theme in my blog. Why am I in New York? One of my friends who’s been visiting said to me today, “I’ve mentally left New York.” I knew what he meant. I’ve mentally left New York eighty times last week alone, when it was rainy and cold, and I was feeling pretty defeated. My friends in Montana were livin’ it up at Homecoming in the mountains, drinking mugs of hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps and laughing at each other’s kids, and I was schlepping through the city with my resume and rain jacket. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt that—lost, wondering why the hell am I here.

I didn’t follow a guy here. You might say I kind of followed my cousin, out of convenience. It was a lot easier to move to a big city with a room to sleep in and already knowing a few people. It’s not like I was completely helpless when I moved here, even though I had no direction (whether any direction exists today is questionable, but who's keeping track). After only offhandedly following my dream of being a writer the first two years in NY, I did the unthinkable and took a hiatus from writing for the first time in my life. It was becoming too depressing.

Many good friends that I’ve made here have now left the city, returning to their hometown versions of Suburbia, and all with good reason. The city gnaws at you sometimes. It's a terrible city to be broke in, if your parents aren't a train ride away in Long Island or Connecticut. There is no "I'll just take my laundry over to my parents' house" for us Midwest-and-further transplants. In this economy, we aren't able to buy plane tickets home, even though New York is one of the cheapest cities to take off from. Thanksgiving with family becomes a citywide network collaboration of "Okay. Who do we know that's stranded? Who has an apartment centrally located in the city with table space?" and/or "Alright. Angie has a big place in Queens, 25 minutes away from Manhattan. We just have to bring wine."

But there is a certain satisfaction you achieve each time you call a cab driver out when he's trying to take you for a sucker; when you discover you have bedbugs for the third time and instead if breaking into tears, you immediately go into survival mode and start plastic wrapping and sanitizing your apartment. There's the gratification of rushing up the subway platform just in time to make eye contact with the conductor, and the pleading, determined look in your eyes makes him open the doors--one last time--for you, before sending the train rushing away.

Best hiatus I ever took from anything. Reading through things I’ve written in the past, I was actually smiling and enjoying myself. Sure, not every piece I read through was enjoyable, but there was enough that actually made me, well, proud. It’s the same feeling I experience when I wake up with a morning run along the East River and find myself down in the East Village by the afternoon. There is something extraordinaire about the animal qualities of the city itself. The way the A Train cuts underneath the water like a racehorse, yet the N Train stutters along like a drunk mule. Concrete jungle, sure. But tree-lined streets, and a flower shop on every corner--usually attached to a deli. Newspaper, sandwich, fresh flowers--all in one stop. People are not rude per se (rude people are found in every city, size doesn't matter), but survival of the fittest is the street’s motto. They want speedy service because they are used to speedy service. They want to go everywhere as fast as possible because, well, they can. There will always be a better cabbie, a more efficient barista, a better deli with better pastrami.

But there will never be a better city. Not in the raw sense that New York is. A better Suburbia? Definitely. No question. But New York doesn't claim to be a suburbia. It just claims to be itself. Dirty. Fast. Tough as nails.

And anywhere I move from here will be a piece of cake.