yesterday was not a good day to fly (nyc day 23)
My flight back home got canceled a few hours before departure yesterday, for weather reasons (allegedly... I still don't know where this 'weather' was). Delta automatically rebooked me to one going out at 6AM the next morning, which meant I'd have to stay an extra night in the middle of nowhere. I was already accepting the fact I'd have to make do with no remaining clean clothes (I only pack 1 shirt for my short, overnight business trips) when I realized that there was another flight to NYC that night, with a layover in Atlanta.
Two significantly delayed connections later, I made it back to New York at 1 in the morning, but judging from the long lines at the Delta help desks in the airport I got off lucky. One of the coworkers I was traveling with got stranded in Atlanta after missing her connection to Orange County. I'm not sure what she ended up doing, but she probably had a long night.
I can't believe a month has passed since I 'moved' to New York. It doesn't feel like it, probably because I've spent more than a week out of town (2 business trips, long weekends in DC & Boston). I wish I could slow time down. I want more time here before I have to make big decisions about my future. I've made so many wonderful memories here already, so why am I worried about committing to a longer term move? Do I miss my parents and the tranquility of the suburbs? (yeah, I can't believe I just said that either.) Is it the regret of not saving more money by living at home? Or do I just run away from change and commitment?
This week has kicked me in the teeth after I got back from Boston because I haven't gotten enough sleep in days and my brain feels like it's perpetually stuck two days in the past. On Monday I left the vinyls I bought for my friend in Boston on the overhead compartment on my train back home. By the time I realized, I was already on the subway platform, and I ran back to search for the train only to find it as it was rolling out of the station. I filed a missing item report, and Amtrak called a day later to tell me that my vinyls were in DC's Union Station and that I'd have to come get them in person within 30 days.
Somehow, one of my Boston friends read my blog and connected me to her friend who, by some stroke of fate, has trips to DC and NYC coming up in the next two weeks. Unfortunately, she's not going to be in DC when the lost and found is open (weekends 9-5, grr), but she has a friend who will be! So now a friend of a friend of my friend is trying to help me bring these silly records to New York, which just warms my heart. At this point I won't even mind if they can't make it workātheir kindness and generosity have already made my week.
Something awesome I've been reading recently is the TinyLetter Forwards archive. The writers in this archive are unbelievably good. Just check out this tinyletter about love and PokƩmon Go; or these thank you notes organized in a way I want to steal; and this beautiful slice-of-life of my hometown and my adopted one.
I want to read all of the letters in the archive, and when I'm done, I want more. I love the platform, but it seems to have gone quiet in the last few years (MailChimp might have taken over it?). I want to create my own TinyLetter with a more intimate feel, especially because some friends have asked if they can subscribe to my blog via email. but I think the pressure of sending Things directly to Real People would make it harder for me to write freely. I don't want to waste anyone's precious time or attention with my silly ramblings; I don't even enjoy reading my own writing (it's god-awful and I know it too). Right now I quite like the fire escape garden I've created in this corner of the tiny Internet, where I don't bother anyone and the only way to read my writing is to actively go out of your way to visit.
I think that's it... between orange skies and weekend trips I haven't been in NYC in a while! I'm looking forward to seeing the city again, because I've missed it. I keep thinking about this bit from one of the TinyLetters I linked above:
The second night we were in Atlanta, we drove out to have dinner with friends who live in an immediate suburb. They told us to meet them at a restaurant inside something called Avalon, which turned out to be a mega-mall. Thomas is annoyed at driving and parking in malls now, and incapable of walking through them without becoming comically angry. I am very proud of him for this change. A city like New York deprives one of all the normal skills that one develops living almost anywhere else, and then calls that inability superior. One comes to believe it, perhaps as compensation. If New York is a form of escape even for those who donāt intend it that way, perhaps one might think of how escape and captivity rub up against one anotherās borders and bleed colors into each otherās definitions. Successful escape as an inability to go back. I canāt drive and I give directions in north/south/east/west rather than right and left. I cannot navigate a mall, and when made to do so, experience it as something on the level of a fever dream. I am very good at knowing exactly where to stand on the subway platform so that I can be in front of a door when it opens, and I will probably never in my life own property.
And it rings so true! I think New York is already starting to spoil me, because when I visited DC and Boston I could only rue how small the cities were, how sad the restaurants were, and how pitiful the public transit was. Is this what it feels like to be a New Yorker?
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