Post College Impressions

It’s been six months. I tried to write about NYC sooner, but I didn’t have much to say. On a daily basis my thoughts range from how the subway trains are so screechy to how the air can be stinky to how I made two perfect train transfers in a row, I dunno. Even with 2-week sprint periods at work, nothing feels nearly as urgent as the problem sets and exams in college. Right now, everything feels suspended slightly. In college my goal was to graduate, now my goal is to manage a budget? Invest in retirement? It’s weird. I try to keep short term personal goals, but they’re so easily delayed.

And so time passes. I’m not surprised anymore that so many people grow older and never accomplish the dreams of their younger selves. If I didn’t bother to be aware of the days, I could see myself here indefinitely, not moving in any certain direction, my lack of routine becoming routine in its disorganization.

On some days my comfort confines me to laziness. On other days I over optimize my time and thinking towards work and play and by the end of the day, there’s not much energy or person left. Balance is difficult. Prioritization is difficult. In college I could assign an order of importance to my classes. I don’t know how to do this in my adult life. I don’t know whether to work longer hours or to sleep more or to cook more or to start that painting I was supposed to start two months ago.

Right now it’s easy to just do a bunch of stuff to keep preoccupied. So far I’ve attended 2 months of weekly hip hop classes and gone to a handful of concerts and played around a dozen games of Blood Rage (a board game). I’m wrapping up right now on a UCB Improv 101 class and I sort of go to church. And in 2 weeks my figure skating classes begin. NYC has so many things to do, and they’re all expensive. Such is the price of distraction.

The better moments that I treasure are simpler. I like the cloudy days where the city becomes a beautiful palette of faded turquoise and aqua and grey. I remember a stunning tree I saw on a fall day dressed in golden leaves, bright even through the rain. I thoroughly enjoy the sunny days where the sky is gentle blue and the city’s metallic frames shine in the light.

I adore the sight of excited faces around me at EDM concerts, splashed in color from the laser lights overhead, fists pumping into the air as we go deaf from the music screaming from speakers above. I embrace the soft moments of sinking into couches next to friends in front of a TV, enjoying more the company than the screen. I smile at the minutes doing nothing, just breathing, that bliss of early morning moments after enough sleep.

I used to never want to slow down, and yet each time I do leads to an enchanting experience. This city is full of the magical and mundane, and I’m starting to find the mundane magical.

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