The Push and Pull of NYC

I recently walked past someone wearing a hat with the slogan ‘New York or Die’ chain stitched in gold thread across the front. When you’re here, caught up in the boundless energy that the city radiates, that really is how it feels. The feeling that there’s magic around every corner – ok, not magic… maybe it’s a crackhead exposing himself to you, but you get the picture – mystery, excitement and a feeling of endless possibility that can’t be found elsewhere. 

Knowing there’s always something happening is both exhilarating and tiresome. Some thrive, some burn out, and some like me, find a place in the middle with equal parts lust and hatred towards the city. A resentment that somewhere providing so much creative inspiration and joy can simultaneously make your life so hard. An urban rollercoaster of emotions, the city is polarizing in the best possible way. The highs make you feel like your life is fulfilled in ways that nowhere else could provide, and the plummeting lows, where it takes all of your strength not to give your landlord the finger and step off the ride for good.

The inconvenience of regular life here brings about the need to use all kinds of external services to make it convenient again. Outsourcing your laundry. Groceries delivered to your doorstep. A virtual therapist. A doorman to collect your mail. After a while these conveniences seem hard to live without, but really it’s just New York that makes them necessary. You work hard to streamline your life only to fill the space with other supposedly more fulfilling tasks. The same way that you move into a larger apartment only to fill it with more stuff, we do the same with our time. Is my life really better spent brunching, visiting endless galleries and attending work functions? Am I missing out on real life, or is this it? 

Sometimes these feelings overpower my love of the city and I leave. But never for long. I always come crawling back. When i’m away I begin to miss the very things that forced me out. Stuck in some ironic loop that makes me question my values and deep down, who I really am.

My wife and I recently had a baby and now find ourselves hiding away in our local neighborhood more than ever. Venturing only as far as the shop or for a walk in the park, we are no longer utilising the city like we used to. Without our Thursday night gallery crawl in Chelsea, our midnight ramen trips to Chinatown, or our Saturdays spent dancing in a Brooklyn warehouse, we start to feel like we could be anywhere. Somewhere cheaper, friendlier, with better weather and where you don’t need to join a waitlist for daycare prior to your child actually being born. If we do ever get out for good, at least we’ll always have a piece of this unbearably incredible city with us. Our little ‘New Yorker’ will be there with us and this will always be his hometown.

We have had 6 life changing years in this metropolis and I wouldn’t change it for the world, but this place has not made it easy. Though, I guess nothing worth having comes easy.

Perhaps that’s the thing that my time in this city has taught me the most.