Day 3 - SF

I'm a big fan of being able to take my time. Which I have been doing since the move. Having no day job is kinda nice!

After dragging myself out of the house I had the pleasure of meeting up with my New York/NTI/FullStop friend Lillian who is just starting a cross country trip in a truck for the next year with her boyfriend (Jealous!). She lived here a few years ago and we chatted at length about SF vs. NYC, which is an interesting topic with her because she grew up in Manhattan.

The park is gorgeous and the day was perfect and the views were great. A lovely afternoon.

After that I trekked to an area of the city I have never been to where Dan grew up. It was weird! It looked like a hilly Iowa! the mainstreet could have just been a clean version of Boone. Small town and suburbia within an urban climate....perfect!

Day 2 - NYC

One. Tired. Puppy.

That was me. So, this was the first night I had had in a week and a half where I was sleeping in a bed by myself. I have been couch hopping for so long, along with working 40 hours a week, seeing streams of friends, moving across the country etc etc etc. What did I do this day? I slept. Then I took four hours to get ready for the day. I left the house at 5pm. My body was so in need of a recoop day.

Things I had today:

- A burrito (left over) for breakfast. Love that!
- The best latte I have ever had
- The most sleep I've had in weeks.

Day 1 - SF

Sorry, I'm gonna backtrack. I've been so displaced since I've been here that I haven't really wrapped my mind around writing too much. Let's see...

Sunday, my first full day in the city, was picture perfect gorgeous. I was told October was going to be the nicest month of the year here, and it's not disappointing. Getting an extra month of summer is interesting, especially knowing that heavy snow and frost bite aren't around the corner. 

On the docket for Sunday was a full day of Burning Man Decompression. Decompression is an all day event in each large city post Burning Man that allows for one final day before the end of the main Burner season. I went to Burning Man on a whim in 2008 not knowing what I was getting into and it turned out to be one of the best weeks of my life and one of the integral seeds that planted the 'I should move to San Francisco' idea. While I didn't visit San Fran for another year and a half after going, Burning Man was grown out of the San Francisco community. So coming here and spending my first day at an event centered around artistic freedom and boundary erasing really meant a lot to me. It's what I want to continue experiencing in this city, so a great way to start.

A few things I have noticed:

- Dogs here look like dogs. Not like little coiffed puppy children.
- Cars stop and wave you across the street...even if they weren't required to stop.
- No one honks.
- I'm going to have amazing thighs from living at the top of a 3 block hill for the next three months. Cheers to that!

Day 0 - NYC --> SF

I have a natural disposition when I move. It is loosely called "Laura is independent to a fault and likes to make things as hard as possible on herself." Here's how the day went:

Wake up at Leta's in the East Village after a night of dancing with my lovely friends one last time.
Train to Astoria.
Get a cabbie at the train to drive me to my apartment, pick up my massive amount of luggage and then drive me to La Guardia
Get to La Guardia and get told that if I don't remove 10 pounds from each piece of luggage I would have to pay $180 in overweight fees.
Throw away 20 pounds of my clothing and random accessories.
Lose my boarding pass when I try to go through security.
Finally get through and get on the plane carrying WAY more than is allowed for carryon (roller bag, bursting shoulder bag and purse)
Fly to Atlanta
Try in vain to reorganize my things to make it easier to carry.
Fly to San Francisco
Look out over the amazing Sierra Nevadas and be breathtaken by how much I love the west. Realize just a tiny bit that I have left New York (though this is still not clear to me at all. I'll figure out that I'm not going back to New York someday)
Land in San Francisco
Get my luggage and realize very quickly that I should have asked for help (please see picture for details as to why)
Take 45 minutes to lug my luggage up and down an assload of escalators, almost killing myself in the process, to get to my rental car.
Get my rental car, struggle to get my hated luggage into the car and realize I don't know how to turn the car on (keyless ignition?!). Finally sheepishly ask for help.
Pull out and get my GPS on my phone ready to guide me to my new home!
...phone dies ten minutes into the drive. I have no map and no directions.
Use my intuition to get me to my new apartment. Become highly impressed with myself.
Try to park on a hill. Almost shit my pants in fear. Abandon that attempt.
Park, grab all of my recording equipment, get into my apartment and instantly record a voiceover job.

Talk about a long and involved day. I could have made it so much easier on myself. It's been a few years since I've been in charge of a move so I kind of forgot that I naturally make things exceedingly difficult, but at least I always keep a good attitude about it and just laugh at myself for being unprepared.

Long story short. I somehow made it out of New York City in one piece and got to my new home in San Francisco all by myself without dying. Success! I officially escaped!

Day 1 - NYC

I was walking through the streets of Midtown Manhattan, walking out of work to the train for the last time, drinking them in one last time, the people, the smells, the traffic. This area of the city had been the breeding ground of all of my aversion to New York. I always connected midtown with the more painful and depressing times I had in New York, which was the majority of the time I was here so going through those streets has always made me anxious and down. I avoid it at all costs usually, but I always end up working in that stupid neighborhood. 

 Looking one last time, knowing that I would never again walk through these streets on a daily basis, I suddenly felt my heart bursting with love, adoration and inspiration. I kind of feel like I found myself in these streets. And now that I was no longer a part of the matrix of the city I was able to step back and for the first time appreciate the completely unique and frenetic never ending heartbeat of the city. Cars, people, horns, yells, bikes, food and trash swirling around without ever stopping. This is what makes New York so one of a kind, it truly never sleeps. The movement is a constant overwhelming pulse and you can either choose to be a part of it or get forced into the groove against your will. 

I kind of felt like a ghost standing in the center of Herald Square at that moment, flanked by the Empire State, Times Square and Flatiron all visible in my radius. I feel like I had already left but my eyes has stayed to finally sit back and watch all of the millions of moving gears that made the city tick. It wasn't overwhelming anymore because I wasn't a part of it. I was a spectator. And while I can't say I will ever miss Midtown I can say that I finally appreciate its one of a kind never ending series of moments. Those streets have seen more than any other place on earth. 

There was no better way to say goodbye.

Day 2 - NYC

It has not dawned on me that I'm leaving. Not one bit. This city is like that. Everything moves so quickly and with so much variance that you can never really see the present clearly. The buzz of the city is so fast that it blurs reality. Hence, I don't think I will notice I'm moving until I have already moved.

I'm not usually a massive social butterfly. I go out a couple of nights a week usually. This week however has been social social social! Lunch with my friend Adriana who couldn't go to my party last night and then dinner with my friend Matt so that I could nosh on some Rizzo's pizza (best pizza in NYC in my opinion) one last time. Tomorrow holds a possible Shake Shack lunch date and then my LAST NIGHT IN TOWN(!!!) eating Latin tapas with a few friends possibly followed by Karaoke. Then somehow I'm on a plane and just continue my weekend uninterrupted on the other side of the country. It's going to be Halloween by the time I've had enough moments to breathe to realized I moved. These things sneak up on you!!

I feel like my posts haven't been too insightful in the last week. I guess you can say I'm in an 'action' week, not a 'reflective' week.

Day 3 - NYC

The one thing I will miss is my friends, I am truly blessed to have such an amazing community here. If I could take them with me that would be ideal...though I can imagine that many of them will slowly migrate to the Bay Area over time. We will see :)


Beautiful people who came to say goodbye and have a final drink with me:

Day 4 - NYC

I've been officially displaced for four days now, so I was so thankful to get an evening in (what was) my apartment alone in order to get take a nice shower, make myself dinner, and have a few hours of alone time while I watched Glee and reorganized my luggage to ensure the big one isn't over 50 pounds. I don't wanna pay that fee! The fact that I still have my things at my apartment really makes this feel less definite. I feel like I could wake up tomorrow and say 'nah, nevermind' and move back into my place and cut off all possible ties that I had built in SF. Now, I'm by no means going to do this and to be honest I couldn't do this, I'm just saying that it feels very unreal at the moment.

I think things will feel much more real in the coming hours because my going away party is right around the corner on Wednesday night. It will be an interesting time mish mashing all of the wonderful people I have met and gotten to know in the last four years. People I met my first week in the city will be there along with people that I met just a week ago. I expect it will be a beautifully happy, if not emotional, evening.

I have created a wonderful world of friends here and they are the only thing I am really going to miss. Day 3's post will probably just be one thousand photos of the people I love. It's fascinating though because I don't really feel like I'm leaving most of them behind. The internet is an insane thing in this way. Ten years ago I would be much more sad about saying goodbye because I wouldn't be able to have a day to day update on their lives, their loves and their fashion choices. They would be forced to fade into the ether. This is so different though because I don't expect to fully 'lose touch' with anyone.

Oh Mark Zuckerberg, you done changed my life.

Day 5 - NYC

It seems I'm getting out of New York by the skin of my teeth. I promised myself I would not spend another winter here and I can already feel the steep decline that occurs every year from hot as balls summer to cold as balls winter. There is only about a month in between them. The city is going to be filled with rain for much of this week (but it's looking like the day I fly is going to be clear! Cross your fingers!)

Long stretches of rain in New York hit me like this:

Day One - Man, I love rain. I forgot how much I love it.
Day Two - My boots are still wet and my umbrella is now broken. Ugh...?
Day Three - Over It
Day Four - JESUS CHRIST WILL IT NEVER END!?!?!?

Through these rain storm I have been lugging my computer, my purse, and whatever necessities I need for the day because I am officially homeless. Last night I trudged through the rain with my guitar, my violin and all of my needed belongings on my back. Needless to say I was just a bit of a crankypants.

It's different here because you have no shelter from the extreme elements. You have no car to hide inside of with the windshield wipers and the nice crappy top 40 radio to sooth you as your jeans dry because you cranked the heat. All you get is an umbrella and a never ending stream of cabs to splash puddles on you. Meaning that there is no shelter from the moods that weather creates in you.

It's actually going to be warmer in SF than it is in NYC when I leave. Bring on the Indian Summer!

Days 6 and 7 - NYC and Upstate

I'm officially in the swing of my displacement which means I didn't get to sit down in front of a computer once this weekend. I'm officially moved out of my apartment, I'm officially done catering and I have officially said goodbye to my two favorite people under the legal drinking age: Brady and Riley.

These kids have singlehandedly altered my view on the importance of family. Now, I've always loved my family. I have a great relationship with both mom and dad and after many years my older brother and I are also great friends. Up until a year ago though, I never felt the need to cultivate relationships with my family. They were something that was always just 'there'. It's different though when the family member is a young growing mind.

I was never close to these boys until they moved up to New York after their parents' divorce. A little over a year ago these munchkins were suddenly an hour commute away from me. Having never really spent time with them before I didn't really know what to do but I felt a nagging need to become a more important part of their life, especially in light of the fact that my brother, their father, wasn't going to be able to see them very often because he had sadly remained in Florida.

What has ensued in the last year is a love affair of epic proportions. These awesome kids have taught me the value of family in a way I've never known it. I never had an aunt or uncle who was a part of my life the way I am in there's, so it means so much more to me that they feel a connection. They call me in the middle of the day just to say hi, from what I hear they count down the days until I visit, and when we're together they just light up my day. These boys are really the only thing about leaving that is making me sad. I never thought FAMILY would be the hardest thing to leave behind in New York...

Thankfully, the world has created Skype so I can sit in the comfort of my SF apartment and watch them light saber duel if I feel like it. I'm making a committment to get back to see them as much as humanly possible because it will break my heart if this one year was the only one where Auntie Loo Loo was really present.

Thanks guys, you are some damn cool kids.

Day 8 - NYC

Midtown during a weekday rainstorm is a death trap. I speak of Umbrella Wars.

We all know my general feelings on Midtown Manhattan. I generally think it is the ass crack of America and I try to avoid it like the plague. Unfortunately my job is right in the heart of it, so I spend most of my day every day in that beloved ass crack. People are ruthless on these sidewalks, and I'm one of them. I am a heartless defensive driver of myself through the throngs of gross and rude people. But nothing compares of an umbrella day.

The streets of Midtown just don't logically have the room to handle an umbrella for every person, but oh do we try. I become a warrior to get through it and if anyone crosses my path I will make them pay for it. If you've ever walked past me with an umbrella and I ran into you or blocked your way, rest assured that it might have been on purpose. People! Walk in a straight line, get off of your cell phone, don't loiter on the corner and get moving! The umbrellas will kill you if you don't and I will have no remorse. No one else will either.

I have been jabbed in the eye, I've had my hair pulled out and I've gotten clothing ripped by people weilding their umbrellas like Sherman Tanks to get through the throng. It sucks. It's not enjoyable at all. It makes me take my aggression out shamelessly on (usually) innocent people.

Bye bye Umbrella Wars! I'm definitely not gonna miss YOU!

Day 9 - NYC

The weather here has been turning quickly from hot hot summer to cold gray gross. I'm pretty okay with this because in a week or so I'm shipping out and getting a month or so of Indian summer followed by no winter.

I have been surrounded by extreme seasons my whole life. In Iowa the summer heat index (what it feels like when you add the humidity) can get up to 120 in a heat wave. In the winter the wind chill can rip over the plains at a deadly -60. New York is a more relaxed version of that but still very extreme. Both of these climates also see about two weeks of spring and two weeks of fall in a year.

I map my life by the seasons. I read fantasy only in the winter. I usually only run in the spring. I am the most social in the summer. I can't think of anything in my life that is fall based, but I'm sure there's something. What is going to come of my patterns when I leave the extreme seasons? Will I still have a winter weight gain? Will I still find myself in a period of shedding and renewal every April? Will I still experience seasonal depression? Will I still like reading in the colder months? Will my life continue on the same cycle?

Living in Iowa I never realized how guided by the seasons I was. In New York you are out in that season every moment. You trudge through the snow, you bake under the sun and there is no car to hide in either way. Without the refuge of a car I came to learn just how swayed I am by the cycle of the year.

When people ask me what my favorite season is I say 'the beginning of every new one'. I love the smell of the oncoming season. A fresh entrance into yet another summer or fall or winter or spring. I am fascinated to see what will come of me when I lose the snow, the sweltering heat, the perennial budding and the crunching leaves. Will I feel more lost or more balanced? We shall see!

Day 10 - NYC

Reason #2,459 that I am leaving New York: I do not want to wake up when I'm 46 years old and realize that my all of my dreams and aspirations amounted to being a professional cater waiter. 

The sad thing is that this is a regular thing I witness at every catering event I work. Some of them are quite successful and do it just to make sure they're financially stable. I'm cool with them. The 'professional' cater waiters, the ones who do it for a living in their 40s and still talk about the moment that they might get their big break...they are something I never want to become.

Day 11 - NYC

They always say that you can tell a tourist by where they are looking when they walk down the street. To be honest you can tell a tourist by the camera around their neck, the bad clothing style, the white tennis shoes, 50 extra pounds, the I <3 NY tshirt, the slow walking and the stopping in the middle of a crowded sidewalk to 'get the perfect picture of little Sally in front of that big tall building!'. But I guess you can also tell by where they are looking. The tourist, the visitor, and the curious look up. They seek the skyline and the height of this totally unique little land as they walk through the streets. The resident, however, looks straight. They use their laser city vision to peer through the crowds in order to map out their best route through the throng. Alternatively, they may also look at their feet to avoid puddles and trash and piles of pee or shit or vomit left by dogs and homeless people and drunks. The resident, however, does not look 'up'. I was the resident from the day I came here. Point A to Point B. In and out. Expeditious and succient. Not wanting to take the time to take in the world around me.

Now, after so many years, I'm the visitor. I have found myself taking in the city. I have found myself looking up. I am finally finding the moment in me to appreciate the beautiful architecture laid against the little patches of visible sky. My dad is an architect (hi Dad!) so I was raised to appreciate unique and creative structures but for the most part I have ignored the architectual offerings of New York for the last many years with a random few exceptions. While I 'saw' them, I rarely took them in because it took so much energy for me to merely walk down the street blocking out everything I could in order to keep sane.

One day about a year ago I walked the Brooklyn Bridge by myself on a whim one Saturday morning and stumbled upon an incredible installation art festival in DUMBO by total accident. It think it was the first day that I really let the city in for more than just a minute or two and it was one of the best days I've ever had in the city. Hours in silence with myself just viewing and seeking and stumbling upon things I didn't know existed. The Brooklyn Bridge truly is something I think everyone should walk in silence once. It is a breathtaking piece of architecture and it deserves ones rapt attention.

Something in me changed that day. Since that day I've been pretty good at intermittently letting in the views of the city and experiencing them, not just remotly appreciating them and moving on. Lately though, it has been constant. For the first time I feel that I'm really 'taking in' what is around me instead of just seeing. Instead of just letting it pass through my vision into the abyss. I'm sure it's all a part of saying goodbye, but it's such a change.

Could I take the city in like this every day? No. The over stimulation of the city is too much for me much of the time, hence the major reason why I am leaving. I prefer to live in a place that doesn't force itself on me. In New York my life revolves around New York. I would like to live in a place where my life revolves around my life with a vibrant city as the setting. I'd like to get back to my usual self, the person who does take in every minute detail of my surroundings. The person who worships beauty and really drinks in the world around her. Here I refrain for fear that I will take in a stimulus that pisses me off and makes me want to punch someone in the face. Aaah New York :)

For these last 11 days, however, I am watching. I am a viewer of the (while hard to live with and frustrating) vibrant and ever changing landscape of this city. I'm taking it in. What's more, for this little moment in time, I'm really enjoying it.

Day 12 - NYC

I'm in the throws of my first official panic laced freak out today. It hit me like a brick late Saturday night but I was able to avoid thinking about it too much Sunday because I took a lazy day and didn't do much but lay in bed and have dinner and drinks with Dan (who totally took my mind off of it). But today, giving notice at both of my jobs, it hit me in an unavoidable way.

Moving to a place where you don't know who you can trust is a hard thing to do. I've done it before and it was a rocky experience then, I'm feeling it'll be a bit of a rocky experience this time. I have a better head on my shoulders, a slightly easier city and a lot more lined up for me this time around, but it still feel very uneasy. I don't think I quite realized how important my circle of friends has become to me and how much I really do depend upon them. The prospect of starting from scratch in a city of strangers suddenly feels terribly daunting and filled with potential emotional landmines.

My younger self would deal with this by jumping into a relationship and grasping onto that as an anchor for dear life. However, when doing that, the situation just gets buried and you always have to end up dealing with it in the end anyway, its just then mixed with heartbreak and a bunch of other crap... I'm more than happy to skip that step. I'm not really interested in hiding from things I'm scared of in a relationship again. Been there, done that, time to try the other way.

But wow, the other way is so much more daunting.

Day 13 - NYC

This was a whirlwind weekend of people. Many friends from many different parts of my life filling my days. That is something that never would have happened the first year I was here. My priorities have gone through a major renovation from the day I set foot in this city with my suitcase and my newly 23 year old self. I'd say that biggest positive change in my priorities is my realization that it is the people you surround yourself with that really create the quality of your life.

I didn't care about making and sustaining friendships until recently. I've always been social and had friends of course, but the concept of actively going out and creating and cultivating friendships is one that I was a late bloomer into. Maybe its because I've spent much of my adult life in relationships, but I never really felt the need to 'have friends' other than the one or two who I really needed. How absurdly boring.

I did a terrible job of making friends when I moved here. I didn't try and I didn't care. I actually avoided it. If I was at the end of a rehearsal or work I would sneak out early and jam my headphones in so that I wouldn't have to get stuck riding the train home with anyone. Now I have a fear that my fear of making friends will stop me from really opening up and experiencing San Francisco. It's really my only fear about moving. Deep down though I know I'm so different from that person who was afraid of creating friendships. I know know how beneficial to me they are and I am excited to really seek out good people in my life.  Anyone in SF out there wanna be my friend!? Hit me up!

Day 14 - NYC

I spent most of the day with these lovely girls. We went to a great Italian dinner, had cocktails on the rooftop of the Met and then spent the night dancing.

Not too much to say today other than I'll miss them :)

Day 15 - NYC

Day before yesterday I was in one hell of a super cranky mood. Stalking through the streets of Midtown during the 5pm rush I could only chant to myself '17 days. 17 days. 17 days.' to stop myself from punching any unsuspecting street patron in the face. Anxiety and annoyance compounded with car horns, bodies not looking where they were going, bodies walking too slow, bodies standing chatting in the middle of the sidewalk, bodies, bodies, bodies. I was already in a bad mood and I was instantly getting one of my bouts of claustrophobia. Tension Tension Tension.

I was on my way to Brent's to record a song he'd asked me to sing on. Upon entering Brent's place he instantly launched into telling me about the song, playing bits of it and handing me sheet music. He gave me free reign to teach myself the tune. Sitting down at the keyboard and plucking/humming out the tune, my mind instantly focused on the task of song. It wasn't until twenty minutes later when we went into the other room to record and I had to sit in silence for a minute while he set everything up that I realized all of my anxiety and frustration and build up of my day was just...gone. I couldn't even remember what had been bothering me. It had been silently replaced by a stable and positive calm. All I had needed to do was sing for a few moments.

From the day I was born I was singing almost every moment I could. I would sing so loud sometimes that my mother would hear me in her car at the end of the driveway as she pulled in from work. It consumed me for years and I never thought a thing of it. I have a big voice and there was always so much space to fill it with in the air of Iowa. Shortly after I moved here I stopped singing. (which is hilarious because I moved here in part to pursue musical theatre) Unlike the grainbelt, New York felt like there was no space left to fill. Every space around me was already teeming with sound and noise. I was completely perplexed as to how to add to it. My song would become the background to the TV show my roommate was watching or the fight my upstairs neighbors were having. Every note from my mouth made me self conscious. So for the first time I swallowed it. The singing just stopped.

That was about the time I started getting terrible panic attacks for the first time in my life. I started battling anxiety and depression and couldn't find inspiration for anything. I never associated it with my loss of song until the February of 2009 when a friend asked me to record a line of a song for them. Sitting in my living room, a place I'd always found drab and never spent much time in, I set out to record the song. Once I let my voice free (for the first time in a long time) I felt this instant inspiring lightness, this rush of sheer joy shooting from my chest. I instantly rediscovered a limb that I never knew the purpose of in the past. A beautiful weapon for my happiness that I had been forced to neglect due my discomfort in my surroundings. How was I to know that singing was my major emotional healer? It had always been there, doing its work naturally without thought...until it wasn't.

Nowadays I always tell people that "I don't consider myself a singer in this phase of my life, but I am definitely a singer." Regardless of the fact that I can sing here now, I still rarely feel the moment arise when I can open up fully and unhindered and just belt the shit out of something. It's still not my norm.

I know that the living situation where I'm moving isn't all that different. It's still very urban and tightly knit, but I think the atmosphere will be one that brings my voice back to its full verve. It was always a way of life for me and after so many years of it being gone I feel like I'm just about ready to flex my rediscovered limb.

I think San Francisco is going to have to deal with the fact that I sing really really loud.

Day 16 - NYC

Today feels like the first real day of the transition. Chris got into town last night and is staying with me until the day that I move out. So I will be sharing a bed or sleeping on a couch every night for the next month when I finally get into my (somewhat) permanent San Francisco residence on the 18th of October. I can only imagine how good that is going to feel after a month of being a couch hopping nomad.

I always loved being a nomad. Living out of my suitcase, never settling, always able to get up and go with just the bag on my back with everything I might need. I find a strength in being able to do that. It's really nice to know that all you have to worry about is yourself, and living that minimalist lifestyle makes that really clear.  I'm feeling in myself that this will be a big extended period of nomadity (is that a word?) followed by the most settling I've ever done. I've gotten rid of almost everything I own. All of my furniture, 75% of my clothing, shoes, books, housewares. Everything. My room is a skeleton with a few pieces of furniture I have yet to shed and some random clothes. It's like I'm wiping the makeup off of my face before getting a huge amazing better than ever facial. Wiping out everything to start fresh on what finally feels like the real exciting new thing. I'm salivating for the moment when I can choose the right San Francisco apartment for me and for the first time I'm daydreaming about paint colors and design ideas in a way that makes me think it's right around the corner. But we shall see!

For now though, the only designing I will be doing is with the little clothing I have left unpacked for use for the next month, which I will be carting around in a cloth shopping bag that was given to me as a holiday gift from a girl who's name I didn't know in an office gift exchange at some random job I temped at two years ago. Thanks random lady!

Day 17 - NYC

Thoughts

If I chose to stay here I'd have a pretty good life. I was offered a full time job with the ASPCA, which I currently temp at, and I would totally take the offer if I wasn't leaving. Working for a non profit is one of the few job sectors I would happily commit myself to. I also have fallen in love...a terrible thing to have happen when you are about to set off. Her name is Sabrina and she is a roly poly 19 pound rescue cat that we foster here at the office. I want to adopt her so badly, but she would not handle a cross country trip well, plus it would make finding an apartment much more difficult. She is so fun, so fiesty, and so so so fat. I just love her. Every day that she doesn't get adopted I get a little more sad.

If I was staying I would now have a full time job with benefits and a needy cat to mother. This is why I am leaving.

While I've come to accept New York and all that it is, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I never want to get settled here. I have fought growing roots here the entire time. Though I have lived in my apartment for over three years I have never painted a single wall, never bought a single piece of nice furniture and never even gotten a plant or two for my huge balcony. It's getting to the point now though where the roots will begin to grow whether I like it or not. The last thing I want to do is wake up married and with a baby in New York City at age 35 and ask myself 'How did I let this happen?' New York is a place to explore, experience, and get knocked on your ass so you learn to stand up and brush yourself off with minimal pain. For me though, it is not a place to build a life.

I have to leave before I settle because I can feel it in my bones that I'm ready to start making those longer term decisions when the opportunities to do so arise. Those decisions need to be made in an environment that will make them feel good, make them feel exciting, and make them feel like growth. I want those decisions to take place in a place where I like the smell of the air. I want them to occur in a place where I feel relaxed and open. Most importantly, I want to be in a place where if I feel stress about life changes I can run away to the mountains for the afternoon to clear my head. I seek a balance between culture and nature. I seek a place where I can taste both urban life and rural life. I seek a world where I can find both sound and silence. The only place that seemed to fit the bill (without need of a car) was San Francisco.

San Francisco has always been in the deep dark back of my mind as the next step. The step I was going to take when I was ready to say goodbye to all of the expectations for life that I had when I left college as the idealistic and goal oriented budding actor that I was. That girl had no clue that the goal she had set for herself was actually a reality she would find little to no fulfillment in. It shocked me when I realized it, and it still shocks me now. I spent a decade planning my adult life as a traveling actor, living on bread and trying to find a part time job here or there, maybe catching a break but not really caring if I did or not, because it was 'for the art!'. What a bunch of crap. Man, I sure do like eating. I like being social and drinking a beer and having the extra twenty bucks needed in a night to do that. I like a stable lifestyle. From the outside, people look in and still think my life looks unstable, but I've found a system that works for me and I'm ready to build on it. But if I build on it in New York I will only wake up unhappy knowing that I was never supposed to do that here. New York was necessary for me to discover my personal foundation. The next step is necessary for me to build on it.

Actions

Yesterday was my favorite type of New York day. I love the days when I get to do something competely random and then gorge myself on great food. (There will be pics of this soon but I can't quite post them as I'm on my work computer :) )

Yesterday afternoon was back to Brent's place so that I would sing a few notes on one of his 'With Lyrics' tracks and then dress up as a bully and push him around in front of a green screen for the video of the song. I love doing videos with Brent. He has a huge following and it always makes for an entertaining read of the comment postings. (if you're curious about his work just google brentalfloss and you will be bombarded).

Once done there I met up with the amazing Dan Koplowitz in order to cross another thing off of my final 'To Do List'. Shake Shack! I love love love Shake Shack. It is located in Madison Square Park, my absolute favorite park in the city where I have had some of the best moments in my time here. I don't know what it is about that park but it just doesn't feel like Manhattan. Even in Central Park I am not able to remove "Manhattan" from clouding my mind when I look at its beauty. I can 'appreciate' Central Park and most other Manhattan Parks. But I down right love Madison Square Park. It's one of the few places I will truly miss.

It was Dan's first Shake Shack experience. He was satisfied (of course). We gorged ourselves and then spent the evening walking around the area slurping on our milkshakes (Chocolate Peanut Butter of course, though Dan got Vanilla...boring!)

Day 18 - NYC

Thoughts

New York created a Pavlovian response in me. Stimulus: Car horn   Reaction: INSTANT BIRD FLIPPING. I fucking HATE car horns. I wear headphones at all possible times when I'm out alone in order to combat and keep my sanity against the constant onslaught of car horns. I lost patience with it pretty quickly in my time here and my middle finger decided that it had a lot to say on the topic of drivers blaring their horns. After years of this I came to realize that the action off flipping off the driver of said horn honking vehicle was elevated from reaction to reflex. The inital split second where one thinks "Fuck you I really want to flip you off right now" before enacting the action no longer existed. I now go straight from car horn to a fuck you display, many times without even realizing it or looking around to see where the car actually is. Car horn? Finger in the air. Instant reflex.

I have developed a 'Fuck You Reflex'.

At the end of my first summer here I was pretty miserable but I was lucky enough to have been given a month or two of acting work out of the city in a small town in Missouri. The bonus about work in Missouri was that I was close enough to home to take advantage of my favorite midwest perk: a car loaned to me by my parents. I love driving. I love love love love love it. I love the independence of it, the barrier bubble it creates from the rest of the living world, and the ability to sing as loud as I damn well please to whatever (usually shitty) music I choose. It was in one of those first days in Missouri that I realized what was missing in my still new-ish New York life. Music as I move.

I returned to NYC from that job with a fully stocked mp3 player. It was a complete game changer. It was the barrier I needed in order to handle the endless amount of stimuli that circled around in the air. Annoyed? Frustrated? Turn up the music! Ahhhhhh. Instant Relaxation Injection. It was an amazing fix. However, happiness for relief turned into dependency for survival as time went on. If the battery died on my shuffle I would feel a massive amount of panic rise in my chest (admittedly...this still occurs). Though I would easily say it was the most important survival weapon I found to combat New York (I would never have lasted four years here without it), I do believe it effectively made me miss out on a large part of the city. When you cut out one of the senses you rely on for experience you don't really get the full experience. I got visuals and smells of New York with a soundtrack, but rarely did I have the patience or interest in getting the full experience of New York. Not like I care all that much because my little shuffle is still my most prized NYC possession...meaning I guess I was never all that interested in fully experiencing New York in the first place... (more on that another day I'm sure) but admittedly, when there is lack of sound, there is also a surprising lack of sight. I stopped taking in, I stopped observing, I merely put my head down and carried on to get from Point A to Point B with Feist, Hot Chip, Laura Marling and Brooke Waggoner as my walking buddies. I missed almost everything. Rather, I didn't stop to appreciate any of it.

In the last six months or so I have been able to handle the city sans musical barriers. Nowadays I (shockingly) every once in awhile I find myself WANTING to turn off my music and allow the city in. It's a very different experience. What I noticed most is that the city actually does have splashes of color. Without the sounds I was never compelled to look for it before. It wasn't exactly the gray concrete prison I had made it out to be. Still confining, still claustrophobic, but there were spots of beauty! I just never had the courage to find them.

I've made a promise to myself that this practice will die within the confines of this city. It is a habit I plan to leave behind because, unlike New York, I actually want to experience all that San Francisco has to offer. I want to hear what the bums say to me, I want to take in the sounds of the eclectic neighborhoods and the unpredictable conversations one picks up walking down the street. Car horns don't even bother me in San Francisco. My 'fuck you' reflex doesn't seem to exist there. I am more than willing to leave my 'fuck you' reflex behind.

Day 19 - NYC

Thoughts: 

Will I miss the novelty of suddenly being surrounded by the faces of people I spent hours upon hours watching on TV once upon a time? (Logan Huntsberger...I have no clue of his real name...was at a party tonight I catered. We made close up eye contact. It was a 'moment'. Watch out Rori.) No, I can't say I will 'miss it' because I'm not really interested in stardom, but it has always added some spice to my dinner table conversation topics.

I've always found New York interesting in that way, that you can walk past a person of fame or fortune on the street and share the same stench of trash and the same beat up sidewalk with them for that one moment. New York is unlike any other city in that way. We all inhabit the same cramped streets. We get honked at by the same cabbies who are pissed at our jaywalking. We all hear the same crazy motherfucker screaming to repent to Jesus. We all smell the same nasty trash in the heat of the summer. We all smell each other smelling like nasty trash in the heat of the summer, regardless of our stations in life. So much of this city is accessible to the masses and shoved in your face, no matter who you are. While I don't think I will miss that, I sure am glad (in hindsight if nothing else) that I experienced it. New York is a unique organism where everyone is a part of every moment, like it or not. In a way, at least on the streets, we are all equal here.

Midnight on a Monday...a nice rare quiet train

Day 20 - NYC

Day 20: NYC (We will be counting backwards by the way until we get to zero, then we will count up. BC/AD style.)


Thoughts: 


Thinking about the girl that moved here kind of breaks my heart. She was in so much pain and trying  to run so fast from things that ended up plaguing her for almost all of the time that she was here.

I remember how the inside of my nose changed because of the sudden influx of pollution. It would get gross and crusty and just down right freaky. I remember lying in bed for a month, not even understanding what to do with myself or what I was feeling because I'd never been given complete jurisdiction over my time before. I remember hiding within others so as not to face what was plaguing me. All of these things in the confines of a new, endlessly loud, endlessly claustrophobic city in the middle of winter. It probably worked for me at that time, because I was terrified of being alone...and there is no place to be alone in this world.


I don't know when I lost my passion for everything...but it was pretty early on. Probably in the first four or five months. The intensity of the city just made me not care anymore and everything turned muted and gray. It made me ask what the point was and not care enough to find the answer to my own question. As my depression grew and morphed over the years and I started to see the gears that turned it I was terrified that I would never be free of it, and even if I was ready to be free the city wouldn't let me. I felt chained to my unhappiness and my unhappiness took the name New York.

Past that now, I can only look back with a bit of awe. It's all so different. I never thought I would be able to look at New York and not intrinsically blame it. I never even realized that New York had color.


Actions:

So today I was lucky enough to spend the day with the amazing Emma Fisher, my elusive med student friend who has been sadly cooped up with books and cadavers for the last couple of years. I marked two things off of my to do list (which I will post soon), the lovely La Palapa for brunch and The Museum of Sex.

 My kind of museum exhibit! 

The basement at the MoSex has an Aphrodisiac cafe. Too bad I wasn't there with a date... 

Then I rounded out the day with the faboo Brent Black, my youtube celebrity friend (another thing I love about New York, you say 'oh yeah my friend is a professional youtube celebrity' and people just nod and say 'oh cool' instead of 'umm what?') who took me on a mondo trip of foodstuffs. S'mac (yum), Crif dogs (yum yum) and then he kept going while I watched in awe of his bear like appetite.

I was lucky to spend the day with two such wonderful people.


Day 20 complete with a full belly and a bit of arousal.

The Transition

A week ago I compiled a list. After almost four years of living in New York there were so many things I hadn't yet done and needed to do. Sharing the list was the best idea I could have had, because I have now filled up my final days in New York with those last few things I think anyone should do to flesh out the 'New York Experience'...whatever the hell that is.

If you're reading this you probably know that I'm leaving behind a city that I have always found fault with (New York) for a city I hold on a pedestal (San Francisco...though I might hold it on a pedestal partially because it is just not New York). Today marks 20 days before I leave and head off to the next great adventure, and I've found myself getting incredibly reflective. Thus, I have decided to chronicle my final days here and pay homage to the last four years, because for better or worse it happened and ultimately it probably wasn't as bad as I always thought it was.

I want to leave here on good terms with the high maintenance city of New York. I've always said that New York is the most high maintenance girlfriend you could have. All she wants is money, she forces you to pay attention to her (even if she must resort to despicable antics), she tells you to your face that you are nothing special and she could fine a million others like you...plus she smells like shit...all the time. But, then again, she is the star of the party and everyone wants to be inside of her so you keep her around and think you are 'lucky' to 'experience being with her'. Well, I'm done with that. We broke up awhile ago, me and good old New York. But I still want to leave on good terms, and I'm well on my way to doing so. I want to do so by visiting my favorite places, visiting places I have never taken a moment to visit, and doing so with the people I love that have made my time here worth every moment.

Alternatively, I want to, once I have moved, chronicle the new world as well through a slightly hazy, not quite knowing what I'm getting into but excited as hell point of view. 

It might be self indulgent, but so be it.