why new york city is the best city, even at its worst

Everyone calls it “The City That Never Sleeps” and it’s true. New York City has its eyes on you every second you're here. You cannot take a breath without feeling the reverb somewhere else in your day, which means that what you exhale comes back to you in full force.  

One of the many reasons I love this city is that you cannot escape here. So many days we just want to get out of its borders and rough edges, flee to the hills or dream about buying a 3-bedroom house in the suburbs. Some days, having a driveway and paying car insurance seems like the prize at the end of a dark, smelly subway tunnel. But recently, this inescapable city has me all kinds of lit up. The painfulness that we sometimes feel from being here has got me feeling all kinds of healed. And its darkness has brought on the proverbial light.

Here’s why I love it:

You overhear the exact right things in the exact right moments. As I was heading to work the other day, I decided to change up my usual old commute and walk down a different street. I passed two men talking - both in some sort of service industry. One said to the other, “It’s all about happiness man, you gotta find a job you love.” Okay, not overly profound in and of itself, but in the context of my day, it was a bold reminder.

As I approach a new decade, I am taking stock of my emotional and aspirational inventory and that includes making sure I am filling my days with things I love. This particular day, I said no and let some people down in order to do what I needed to do to feel happy. Not a comfortable thing for a people-pleasing, needy, affirmation-junkie like myself. But because I left my earbuds out at that moment, I allowed some New York in and was reminded by this stranger that you have to do what you love. You have to create happiness. If something isn’t working in your life, then change it.  Being uncomfortable is only temporary because the happiness you create is connected to your truth. The city gave me a dose of affirmation when I needed it the most.

When you unexpectedly run into people you know in a city of 8 million people, a signal is being sent. For some reason in the past couple of weeks, every time I take a detour on my way home, I run into someone else I know. Each of these times, this happenstance meeting, this serendipitous pow-wow rubs off on the next few days. We connect again, plan something magical and get our ducks in a row to create something new. There is a spark that gets lit by the chance of meeting in New York City and that spark burns bright into furious creation. It also signifies something. It feels like there is a giant cartoon arrow pointing at the moment, saying, “Look over here! This is where you should be paying attention! Got energy? Put here!” The fact that I’m not supposed to be there at that place and time, that it was a last minute decision based on train schedules and phone calls and grumbling tummies makes it all the more surprising to run into those friends-turned-collaborators. It’s poetic, really: Change up route. Get new direction.

You find your tribe. There are all kinds of tribes out there and I have been part of many. The audition tribe, those fellow actors waking at dawn to stand in line and wonder if we’ll be wearing heels or flats that day. The day job tribe, those fellow artists who are just trying to make rent and hold onto their creative mojo while we’re all still young. The down and out tribe, those late 20-somethings with too much heaviness and not enough experience, trying to calculate just how long they can run on the fumes of their formerly ambitious 22-year old identity. But the best thing about this city (and growing up in it) is when you seek your tribe, because in this city, when you seek, you find. It’s taken me years to figure out that the people in my life are choices I am making and not just inevitable circumstances of fate. When I decided I wanted to cut the fat from my mental chatter and recycle all of those used up negative stories into fuel for creating a passionate, happy life, I found my people. This city has a lot of gems. And when you decide what and who you want to surround yourself with, you’ll never be alone.

Facing your demons becomes a daily practice. The moment you walk out of your apartment, everything you see is a reflection of you. If you leave the apartment with a dull sense of dread, chances are there will be no subway seats, someone will knock into you on the street, you’ll spill the coffee you got from a barista with a major attitude, and you’ll find a dead cockroach in your hallway when you come home. (I mean, at least that’s what I have heard…) But, if on the other hand, you leave your apartment with a sense of ease, chances are you’ll make all of your subway transfers easily and efficiently, you’ll meet a laughing baby on the subway who will make you giggle with delight, you’ll find a new coffee shop with a darling barista and a delicious cold brew and the barista will over-punch your rewards card so you’re closer to your next free caffeine fix, and somehow, miraculously, when you get home the dishes will be done.

It’s all perspective and we know this, but the magic of New York is that you have to face your perspective. This city is either the best thing or the worst thing and it is barely, if ever, just mediocre. Which means there is no denial here. There is no wash of “okay.” I have been the despondent, coffee-drenched, cockroach-finding Debbie Downer and looking back on those times, I’m glad that I felt like I could crumble. I would rather have that shiny New York City mirror in my face so I can deal with it and pull myself out of it than stay stagnant in a gray wash of average. New York is not always comforting, but my Lord when it comes to reflecting you, it sure is accurate.

You cannot take for granted one moment of being here. In this city, people are getting out of town all the time. I don’t mean vacationing in the Hamptons, I mean fleeing to other parts of the country. I have lived here for seven years and the first time my friends started leaving felt like a punch in a gut. I thought we were going to conquer the beast together. Selfishly, I felt a little bit abandoned.

But as the years have gone on and more and more of your friends leave, you realize that every day you stay you are making a choice. Every time someone else packs up and ships out, a little part of you asks, is it my turn? Should I go? What is keeping me here? Sometimes the answers come and sometimes they don’t, but at least it forces you to ask the question. Knowing why we stay in this city that hustles us, and rejects us, and loves us, and dumps us, and forces us to check ourselves is the motor that keeps the city running. It’s the fuel in the early mornings and the late nights and the scraping together of rent for just another month. Being forced to acknowledge why we stay is maybe the most endearing part of this aggravating town. It will hurl you full force to wherever you choose to go and then say, Wanna stay? And when the answer is yes, it takes you full steam ahead.

What do you love about New York City?

All photos by Craig Hanson Photography.

5 ways to deal with uncertainty

We just want to KNOW. Did I get the job? Does he love me? Will I be happy? We just want to know how it will all pan out. I’m an actress, so half my life is spent hoping hard and being rejected. Does that seem dismal? Well, it’s probably more like 70% rejection. But the rejection isn’t the thing that crowds under my skin, making me all squirmy and uncomfortable - the thing that does that: uncertainty.

This need to plan out our lives with careful, calculated, measured certainty is, of course, the antithesis to living a creative life. We know this, and yet, it doesn’t take away the sting of lingering in limbo. It doesn’t calm the swollen heart that can’t decide whether to pump the body with hope or disappointment. It doesn’t still the nerves that hear phantom phone rings when nobody’s a-callin’.

Uncertainty is a fact of life, but this doesn’t mean we have to be a slave to it. I’m not suggesting we sweep our emotionally split attention under the rug, but we can get resourceful when dealing with it:

1. Define what you crave. Okay fine, so you’re not sure how this one job is going to work out, but why does it bother you? What will knowing get you? When you define the thing you are actually craving, you realize that you can have that thing immediately. Go deep. Dig until you’ve gotten to what you’re sure is your baseline. Creating stability doesn’t happen by having your ducks in a row, it happens by figuring out what drives you and who you are.

2. Reach out from your uncertainty. Chances are someone else in your field has felt the same way. Don’t fool yourself into believing this experience is unique. Don’t get me wrong, it is exquisitely yours, but connect with others because of it instead of shrouding yourself in denial. "I’m fine. That’s just the business…" Yes this is factually true, but emotionally false. Acknowledge your sadness, frustration or tiny touch of neuroticism and then connect with others who can relate. Lighten your load by realizing you’re not the only one carrying it.

3. Go work out. Please. Just do it. There is plenty of scientific research that supports this as a de-stressor. You know it does because you’ve experienced this in your own life. As soon as you start moving and drop into your body, you get out of your head. There is nothing more anxiety-ridden than worrying about what could be, and there is nothing more present-making than connecting with your body. Even just a walk can bring you back to solid ground.

4. Create something brand new. There is so much out of our hands that we forget what we do have in our hands: creative agency. The power to make something brand new is energetic currency. When you step into your own authority and make something that didn’t exist before - even if it’s just a delicious dinner - you are putting something unique into the world. Sure, grilling up some chicken doesn’t seem like much, but the more you create small things every day, the more your brain will expect that creativity from you.

5. Toast the unknown. We can struggle against the unknown, we can fiddle with uncertainty or we can appreciate it for what it is: magic. The quiet thrill of feeling flung wildly off track. The generous gift from the universe that proves to us that our spontaneity, improvisational skills and beating heart are all in tact and accounted for. Celebrate the fact that this semi-craziness, this temporary head game, is fleeting. Let it serve as a reminder that our life is not measured by how methodically we hit our marks, but rather by how willing we are to surrender to life's mystery.

How do you react to uncertainty?

All images via Pinterest.

an argument for creating more and worrying less

I am desperate for the enrichment of the everyday. I don’t just want the sun to shine, I want it to devastate me with it’s glow. I don’t just want that food to nourish, I want it to embolden me deep in my bones. When people talk about life’s meaninglessness, I edge toward angry defiance because I know there's depth in every moment.

But there are days when I sit and stare at Facebook for two hours straight with a numbed mind that borders on comatose. So, you know, we all have our ups and downs.

We exist in a constant state of flux that, if we’re honest, causes us to see eighty different variations of living one day. This fluctuation shakes things up for us because it seeps into the one thing that’s supposed to be reliable - our work. Our day jobs and night jobs and gigs and contracts. Eventually, our body of work feels like a living organism that breathes in the limitless elements of this world and exhales a combination of those elements that doesn’t always make sense. A blog post here, a gig there, a day job we love, one we hate, sitting at a desk, building a start-up. All of these things materialize into something that resembles us, but we can’t quite see the through-line. And this is where my conversations have led me lately:

How do we manage all the things we are?

Everyone is well aware that very few people nowadays have one job for a lifetime. The economy has made sure of that. And with the way social media has started to drive business (every kind of business), we have better access to each other and more chances to define exactly who we are. And define we will because we know that if we’re not very clear, who we are gets lost in the shuffle. But beyond these imposed social profiles and strict definitions, there is a small hum inside our guts that tells us: there’s more. Not just more to get done and more to add to your plate, but more down deep. More of the good. More where that came from.

Right now, I have three main paths. I’ll call them paths for now because one makes me money, one will make me money, and one may never make me money. But nonetheless, they are my life’s work every day. So, three paths. Incredibly different. They feed each other now and then, but they require access to different parts of me. And this reconciling is what gets me tied up in knots. This piecing together of those different parts is where my mind starts to spasm.

However recently, I have been mulling over Steve Jobs’ famous quote about connecting the dots. I never really understood why it was so significant for so many people. I used to think, right, of course we don’t know how anything is going to work out yet, we can’t predict the future. This is not profound. But when I re-read this, I finally picked up on why this advice is crucial:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference.”

When we are balancing our eight different potential paths, we feel lost. Am I going to end up doing this? Or that? Or a combination of the two? Is this really who I’m supposed to be? But when we realize that whatever that generator is that is humming in our bones is exactly who we are “supposed to be” because it’s exactly who we are, we can see that the type of work we do is less important than simply committing to doing the work. In other words, if our message is being transmitted out into the world, the vehicle is secondary.

Director, painter, musician, and meditator David Lynch says this about the different ways he will make a film:

“See, a painting is much cheaper than making a film. And photography is, you know, way cheap. So if I get an idea for a film, there are many ways to get it together and go realize that film. There's really nothing to be afraid of.”

He’s not attached to the film. He’s attached to the transmission. He’s attached to creating and communicating. He has developed a body of work that on paper seems to be a thrown together collection of hobbies, but in real life, is an intricate and logical plan that allows him to constantly create without the fear of having to “give anything up.” The dots are connected because the body of work is connected to him.

How do we manage all the things we are? By always doing the work. That hum in your gut won’t go away until you communicate it. Instead of trying to manage it, we might be better served by releasing all of our anxieties about the type of work we “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing, and getting ferociously committed to communicating that ebb and flow that exists in all of us. We might finally see the bigger picture, create the balance, and connect the dots by just going ahead and letting ‘er rip.

When do you clearly see your through-line, if at all?

all images via Pinterest

fill up.

I've been sitting here for 30 minutes trying to think of what to write about, and I keep getting pulled away from this post. I've been perusing my favorite blogs, scrolling through Pinterest, checking what's new in my favorite online shops. I had a few ideas of what to write about last night, but I kept coming back to a big ol' question mark.

I love writing this blog, I love trying to figure out what works and what doesn't, building a readership and an online presence, but lately I've felt like everything I'm doing isn't enough. Maybe the content is boring, maybe I don't have enough pictures. Maybe I have TOO many pictures. It's not polished enough, not grown up enough…it's amateur.

And maybe I've been avoiding writing because I knew that this is what I wanted to say! Basically, I need some inspiration. I need a fire under my pasty bum. Time to fill my own well, as it were. I want this blog to be awesome, and I know it's a process, but lately I feel like it's been dragging. Do you have days like that?

Do tell, because we'd love to hear from you: what do you like reading here? what could you do without?

image via.

monday funday

monday funday 3 by allisonboc featuring dolce vita shoes

Rag Bone top matchesfashion.com

Monki jacket $42 - monki.com

Frame Denim blue jeans $145 - theoutnet.com

Dolce vita shoes shopbop.com

Hermès silk scarve farfetch.com

Essie nail polish nordstrom.com

I'm the type of gal who needs to see something to believe it's possible. I don't, admittedly, get zaps of inspiration from sitting and staring out the window. I like my inspiration a click away, walking down the street, or materializing from a conversation with someone awesome (this happens a lot with friends :).

The outfit above is something I normally would never consider for myself. I'm typically more inclined to fitted silhouettes and a darker palate, but I was inspired while making my blog rounds! Everything a little oversized and neutral, which leaves lots of room to admire the pedicure I know everyone got this weekend (we think, we hope, we feel that spring has finally sprung!). Note to self: wear more silk scarves.

Are you guys feeling this outfit? What trend or sartorial idea has you wanting to mix it up lately?