How I’ve Really Been Doing Living In New York City

I suppose in a nutshell, New York City is both an incredible, and an incredibly humbling place.

It’s diverse, vibrant, full of art, garbage, success, and people who, quite frankly, don’t give a fuck.

And despite the fact that all 8.6 million of us are literally living on top of one another, it’s a lonely place. 

I have to admit that when I moved here from Seattle, I half-assumed that the move would solve all my problems. I assumed my lack of inspiration and extreme quarter-life crisis would suddenly be lifted and I’d immediately have a new lease on life.

Lo and behold, it hasn’t, but any time I’ve had any sort of fleeting thought about moving back to Seattle, I stop myself and think about how that will solve literally none of my problems. Cyclical depression is a shadow that will follow you anywhere you go after all.

I underestimated (and really hadn't even considered) how difficult it would be to make completely new friends and find my place here. I haven’t quite found that yet, but that sort of thing just takes time.

The city has recently broken me, as several others have informed me about their own experiences with moving here. They’ve also informed me that the breaking point will pass and that I will eventually grow from the experience.

Back home I got caught up in a cycle of feeling comfortable but at the same time, not content; I knew I had to move somewhere else to go anywhere with my life - my career, my creativity, and various other aspects of my life.

Admittedly, my creativity has improved marginally, but I figure writing this blog post is at least a step in the right direction.

But enough with the negatives. My personality fits in much better in New York than it ever did back in Seattle, a place full of passive aggression, fake over-politeness, and a staggering lack of diversity.

I’ve been forcing myself to get out there several times a week to do some sort of social activity and I’ve already met tons of great new people. 

And as cheesy as it sounds, anytime I feel lonely, I know that the gym is very much in my comfort zone - a place that will always be relatively the same regardless of where I live. 

But I do think it’s incredibly important to push your own boundaries and force yourself out of that comfort zone sometimes, because nothing great ever gets accomplished without some amount of disturbance in a routine.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, it’s that my type-A personality will never allow me to be fully content with anything in life, but that’s just something I need to learn to deal with. It’s essential to my being that I move at a fast pace and constantly have new things to work on - but what better place to do that than New York City?

It’s easy to feel like everyone is doing more than you in a place like this, but at the end of the day people are just doing their own thing and we’re all just trying to make the most of the short time that we have on planet earth.

Michelle

January 26, 2020