On 6 months in New York
A long overdue reflection on my first few months in the city
I’m eight* months into living in New York City and my best description for how it’s felt so far is: a fever dream. I’m still telling people I’m “new to the city” – but I woke up one day and it was nearly April (!) and I won’t be able to get away with this for much longer.
I’ve been procrastinating this essay because, like my life in the city, my thoughts about New York are still feeling a bit disjointed. Here’s my best attempt at distilling some initial findings:
The social scene moves at a faster cadence.
People here, on average, have a higher default of social activities per week. I’m not sure if it’s a function of how many people the average person knows in NYC or the optionality for how many things there are to do here – but I feel like life moves at an accelerated pace in this city.
My first few months skewed particularly busy because I was investing most of my effort into building community and relationships. I joke that everyone I’ve ever known moved to New York within 6 months of me – when I moved, at least 15-20 of my people from various walks of life were living in or recent transplants to the city.
Between August-December, I was reaching out to everyone I knew, brushing the dust off of friendships I hadn’t seen in a few years and making consistent/proactive efforts to deepen new connections. This booked up my calendar fast – there was a stretch where I had plans every night of the week for several weeks straight.
Fun, but also made me feel a bit like the ball in a pinball machine. It was jarring to go from a year of being mostly alone to having no time for my own thoughts.
I left this period feeling very grateful for my relationships but scattered in my own life. I didn’t have solid routines, I didn’t feel like I was in control of my time – when friends asked if I was feeling settled in January/February, the honest answer was no.
Moving forward, I’m taking a deliberate step back from this cadence, focusing more on building sustainable routines and intentionally allocating my time.
New York is a city of strivers.
Everyone I know in New York is striving for something. Effort is overt in so many dimensions of this city – people work high-intensity jobs with long hours, everyone’s always dressed to the nines, most of my friends have 2+ side hustles/hobbies, even the 5AM workout classes are booked out.
New York is built on a foundation of competition: everyone is constantly trying to earn more, dress better, be more in shape, gain access to increasingly exclusive spaces. The clothing rental app Pickle has a thriving market here because there’s always an event for which you need a dress more expensive than anything you own. In San Francisco I wore a blazer to bar one time and got chirped – in New York, I am afraid to leave my house in sweatpants.1
I’ve had more than one conversation in the last week where someone name-dropped a new social club that I’d never heard of (how many are there?). Hot restaurant reservations go through like three secondary markets before they trickle down to the plebes on Resy like me. Everyone “knows a guy” who will “hook you up”.2
I want to expand on this more later, but San Francisco doesn’t feel this competitive/comparative (about anything other than your startup’s valuation). Not to say that people weren’t doing things in SF3 – but it seemed that status was earned by appearing “effortless” and “at peace” (see: meditation being a fashionable hobby), rather than showing overt effort.
I think once (if?) you get past the gnawing feelings of inadequacy, it’s very fun to be in a city of strivers. It’s motivating to be around people who are better than you at everything – my mile time has dropped a full minute, I’m never alone for my weekend work sessions, and I’ve finally picked up my writing habit again (😌). New York has really reignited the fire in the belly.
A short love letter to San Francisco.
Having a lease again has made me more conscious of the difference between a place of residence and “home”.
I have this vivid memory of driving back from SFO in 2022. I felt such an intense feeling of relief turning up my street – a physical exhale, a settling in my stomach when I saw the view of the Golden Gate bridge from my front steps. I was struck by how much my San Francisco apartment felt like home to me – even more than my childhood house, more than my college dorm. That was a life that I’d built for myself, every metaphorical brick chosen.
There’s a psychological safety that anchors you to home. Home is the axis your life spins around, the way your palms return to heart center. That’s a sensation I missed when I was on the road in my year of travel. When I returned to the U.S., I felt a noticeable absence of a “home base”.
I’m not sure I feel that yet when I drive over the Williamsburg Bridge home from LaGuardia. I love New York, I’m deeply fond of the little life I’m building here, but it doesn’t feel like mine yet.
Lots of opportunities for joy and gratitude.
That being said, I feel a lot of optimism for the months to come. I must invoke the opening credits of The Devil Wears Prada here4 – New York has always felt aspirational to me.
When I was growing up in New Jersey, New York was everyone’s metropolis of reference. I probably got through high school by daydreaming about what life would be like when I was 26 and living in a SoHo high-rise, looking like the late-stage Andy Sachs.5 New York represented the goal state that I was working towards, obsessing over grades in high school and job prospects in college.
Almost every day, I have a moment where I look around at where I am, what I’m doing, and I think to myself: I am living the life I dreamed about at 18.
Life here sparks joy every day. I can’t believe I get to run down the West Side Highway in the mornings, looking out at skyscrapers reflected in the water. I lug my embarrassingly large bag of laundry past tourists in Soho and feel so much gratitude knowing I’m just passing through on my way home. I go to dinners at low-lit restaurants in the LES with my girlfriends and when I close my eyes, we are the female protagonists from every movie and TV show6 I watched growing up.
This is saccharine, this gives me a toothache to write, but it feels nice to be growing into my most earnest self in a cynical city. New York makes it easy to romanticize even the mundane, and the constant gratitude I feel colors my whole life rosy.
This is not entirely the fault of the city itself – it’s just that the only thing that I’m certain of in this life is the day I leave my house without showering in my ratty sweats will be the day that I run into my ex-boyfriend in front of my bodega.
And then uses that as social capital?
Tech Twitter is SCREAMING
Please put on “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall to read this section.
More evidence that nobody’s ever had an original thought in their life – this is a product of early 2000s Tumblr.
Like Sex and the City, but with better life decisions (Carrie are you fucking kidding me with this Big shit).