Living in New York

I should be studying for my Contracts final. It’s in less than two days.

But I can’t bring myself to study.

Instead I’m staring at a brick wall.

(This is not a metaphor. There is an actual brick wall in my apartment, and my bed is facing it.)

I’ve never really noticed how beautiful this wall is before.

Probably because I’ve been so consumed with the intensity of my life since I’ve moved into this place.

I love NY. I really do. I wouldn’t rather be anywhere in the world. But there’s two ways that NY can make you feel.

You can either feel like the entire universe it at your fingertips,

like every experience, every feeling, every thing, everything you could ever want is right there, waiting for you to grasp it,

like you never know what could happen, or who you could meet the second you step onto the street,

like your every dream could come true because the energy around you is just so exhilarating,

….or you can feel lost

because sometimes this great big city will swallow you up

and make you feel really, really tiny.

And right now I feel tiny.

I miss really being in the city, like actually experiencing it.

I hate that I live here but all I do is commute to and from class.

I feel like there’s so much potential, so much to be taken advantage of

…but I’m just sitting here avoiding contracts and staring at a brick wall.

I have no time.

I feel like a lot of us New Yorkers are like that.

We never stop on the street to just take it all in. We’re always pacing, trying to get where we need to go as fast as we can.

(Also, if we did stop, people would angrily push past us, thinking we were tourists.) (Confession: I’ve be one of those angry New Yorkers more times than I’d like to admit.)

But I mean, what’s the rush?

Sometimes I feel like this city just has some kind of living intense pulse to it that everyone in it seems to adjust to.

And sometimes I love it, but right now, I just want to make it slow down.

So maybe I can have time to stare at beautiful things, like this brick wall.

But unfortunately, I must re-adjust my pulse back to NY time.

I really need to study.