The Great Equalizer

In less than six weeks I move to New York City and recently I realized that I am not anywhere near being ready to pack up my life and head out east. It feels as if my "to do list" has been mysteriously enchanted, because every time I cross an item off that said list, ten more items magically appear. So I decided to take a little trip to The Big Apple in the hopes that I could...
1)get some of the residency paperwork out of the way;
2)get a more accurate, less media-driven sense of what life in NYC will be like, and therefore alleviate some of the relentless anxiety that has been creeping into my packing process;
3)get a sneak-peak of my temporary living situation and, again, alleviate some of that incessant anxiety; and
4)further cement the idea into my mind, that this move IS actually happening.

I flew out for Laguardia on Monday at noon and headed back to Portland on Tuesday at 6:30pm; in other words, I was in New York City for less than 24 hours, half of which were spent in the airport or the hotel room. My momentary trip was so brief mostly because I am in the middle of finals and couldn't afford to miss any school, and while my trip was productive and goal-achieving...it equally blew up in my face.

I'll start with the bad news. My trip was productive, but the remainder of my week back home was not. My glimpse into life in the big city has seemed to put me into a sort-of trance and I can't manage to get anything done. I am more than ready to start the next chapter of my life, but part of the moving process includes creating closure in life's current chapter. I still have six weeks in Portland; I have finals, I have work to wrap-up, I have people to say goodbye to, and more than anything, I want this move to be about creating new things, not running away from old ones. Seeing New York has put me in a new york state of mind and I can't seem to keep my head in Portland, but the couch isn't going to create closure and I refuse to leave with the possibility of regrets.

While my trip did leave me with idle hands, it additionally brought about an unexpected revelation. One of my biggest fears about moving to New York City is the somewhat trivial fear that I'm not fashionable enough to live in New York City. After I had taken care of all the things on my itinerary, I had about an hour or so to kill before I had to head back to the airport. I decided that I'd take a stab at navigating the subway system, so I found stairs leading to a shuttle, which lead me to an express train to midtown, which lead me to 42nd and Broadway. At first I was incredibly intimidated and overwhelmed; you come out from that subway station and you walk right into Macy's (THE Macy's) and you look down Broadway and the Times Square sign is staring you in the face. And then I started walking around. And then I started noticing something.

The city is big. The city is overwhelming. The city is chaotic. All of that is undeniable, but because the city itself is so big, the people in it seem small. Everyone walks amongst the same skyscrapers and stops at the same crosswalk. The enormity of the city encapsulates everyone. It's as if the city is the great equalizer. While I was walking down Broadway, towards Times Square, I noticed people sitting in the middle of the street drinking coffee and I had the thought "I do that. I drink coffee with my friends after work." Maybe not in the middle of the biggest, most notorious street in the country, but none the less, the action is the same. The buildings might be taller and the streets might extend farther, but people are people, and that doesn't change just because you change a location.

P.S. My mother didn't believe that people sit in the middle of the street in midtown (or at least she insisted that it was for a parade, in which I offered the rebuttal that the middle of the street might not be where you'd want to sit during a parade.) In case you also don't believe me, here's the proof.