I <3 New York

When I was a Freshman in college, I realized what I wanted to do with my life. Up until that moment, I really had no idea where my life was headed. I'd enrolled in one of the top journalism schools in the country where most of the students harbored ambitions of being the next Tom Brokaw or editor-in-chief of the New York Times. I, on the other hand, chose to pursue journalism through process of elimination. Seriously. That was my methodology. When deciding which colleges I would apply to, I asked myself "Do I want to be a Doctor? No. Do I want to be a lawyer? No. Do I want to be an architect? No..." This continued until I got to journalism. "Do I want to be a journalist? Hmm. I've never thought about it."

SOLD! I applied to journalism schools because I figured I'd hate journalism less than I would all of the other disciplines.

So, I got to school and quickly realized that, as ambitious as I thought I was, my aspirations paled in comparison to those of my peers. "Crap." I thought. "Now what?"

So, after a few months of going through your typical Freshman fears, I had an epiphany. I was sitting in bed reading a book for class one night, and just as my eyes began to glaze over, I turned the book on its side and noticed the logo on the spine.

"Wait a second," I thought. "Someone had to make this book! Sure, there's an author, but someone else had to publish it!"

Eureka! I'd figured it out. I can't believe I hadn't thought of it before. It was like Newton's apple falling on my head from the sky. I'd read books all of my life, and although I'd toyed with the idea of becoming a writer, I never thought about all of the other efforts that went into making a book a book. From that moment forward, I decided I wanted to work in publishing.

And so I spent the next four years doing everything I could to make that happen. And I did a pretty good job. The one thing I realized early on, however, was that, in order to get my start in publishing, I would have to move to New York City after graduation. Sure there were houses all over the country, but the Big Apple was where the action was.

So, I graduated, and immediately began my quest to move. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know Brooklyn from the back of my hand. The subway system baffled me. I couldn't tell you how to get to the Empire State Building even if I was standing at the bottom of it. But I did it. I moved to New York five months after I graduated. Some people thought I was brave. I did it because I had to do it in order to be happy.

A month later I got a job in publishing - a really awesome job in publishing, though I didn't really know that at the time. And, as great as my life was going, I still couldn't get rid of this one nagging feeling that kept haunting me - did I really like New York or what I here because I felt I had to be?

I never visited New York until I was 18. I loved it, but the thought of living here was still so foreign to me. To me, New York was that mythical place that only existed in the movies and cultural myths. It wasn't a place where people lived. It wasn't a place where people raised their families. It was a place to visit. It wasn't a place to settle down.

And when I first got here, I figured I'd start my career here and then move on to somewhere else later - maybe San Francisco, maybe Boston, maybe London. Who knows? I couldn't imagine wanted to end my life in the same place where I'd started my adult one. I couldn't imagine growing old here. I couldn't imagine getting married, buying a home, and starting a family here. Only really wealthy people did that. I was never going to be really wealthy.

My first year in New York was also incredibly hard for me. My close friends lived out of town, and I found myself becoming less social than I used to be. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people all of the time, and yet, I felt lonelier than I ever have before. I lived with strangers (in two different places) in neighborhoods no one had ever heard of. I found myself taking the subway home late at night by myself every night. I got depressed--not severely depressed--just a little depressed.

My one year anniversary in New York was October 13, 2008. My one year anniversary at my job was November 15, 2008. Both of these dates have marked turning points in my life. I've noticed that now that I've been here more than a year, I feel like this is my home. I've made friends, started building a reputation (my name appeared in The New York Observer last week!), and, as of last week, I've found an apartment that I can call my own with a person I actually have known for a while.

It's funny how having a place to call home makes you feel so much happier. Immediately after putting a deposit down on our apartment last week, I was walking around the city with a bit of a spring in my step. I used to feel like an outsider here. Now I feel like I belong.

I met a 30-year-old lawyer in a coffee shop in the East Village tonight. He's originally from Texas and before moving (back) to New York a few months ago, he'd lived in Boston and San Francisco among other places.

"Ooh! San Francisco. I love San Francisco!"

"Yeah. I like New York better. I didn't like San Francisco that much," he said.

"Really? Isn't it like every New Yorkers dream to live in San Francisco?"

"Yeah, I think so, but I couldn't imagine living anywhere else but here."

He gave me his phone number and told me that if I was ever in the area, I should give him a call because he lived nearby.

Maybe I will call him at some point. Maybe we can troll around the Lower East Side together and find little places to call our own. We can join the millions of people from all over the world who have lived here and stalked these streets, carving out neighborhoods and niches and hangouts for themselves. We can yell at tourists for walking too slow and forget that we used to look up in awe at the sheer size of the city before we called it home. We can write about how awesome this city is and pretend no one has ever said that before. We can discover it for ourselves the way countless others have. We can recreate it over and over and find new things to love about it every day. We can curse the rudeness of some of the residents, the inefficiency of the subways, the price of alcohol, food, rent, and basically everything else but then go to any other city and think to ourselves "this is a fine place to visit, but I think I'll stick in New York."

And then one day I'll pass away, and maybe I'll be famous or maybe I'll be forgotten. The important thing is that I'll be here.