I was feeling a bit sad tonight so I went on a little walk to clear my head.
Then it came to me— I’m sitting on a bench, processing my thoughts in the middle of the greatest city in the world, smack in the middle of fashion week.
This hasn’t always felt like the city of opportunity for me. It has sometimes been a city of exclusion, expenses, heartbreak, fomo, fake friendships, evil people and plenty of bad days.
It’s been a city where I worked minimum wage jobs to make it through college, the city where I failed to get many jobs, the city where I failed to launch an app and many different projects, the city where I had to break up with the guy I thought I would marry.
But also it’s been the city where I had the craziest adventures, met celebs, politicians and CEOs, threw parties at five star hotels, got to skip the line at many prestigious places, climbed successfully a very competitive corporate ladder, found my sense of style and self expression, started a business, had my first serious relationship and my first painful movie-type-like love, and paid more in taxes some years than my first full time salary.
New York is beautiful that way.
It knocks you down because it knows you’re capable of more. Then, it rewards you with a little art at the end for all of the trouble.
New York teaches you how to win.
So through all of the ups and downs, every time I’ve felt lonely, sad and insecure— all of the times I’ve felt like I had nowhere to turn… all of those times, I had New York and the endless familiarity of its streets.
And no matter what happens next, I know I will always hold my head up.
Because at least I don’t live in SF.