Always A Tourist

This weekend has been the best weekend on record so far for me living in New York. Finally, and confidently, I can say that I have a few friends that there is no hesitation to call just to hang out. It has taken me 3 months almost- and it finally happened.

I guess now is compared to the calm after the storm. The storm being my complete mental and physical break down of last week and now to the calm: me re-evaluating every single aspect of my adventure through New York. I have made the executive decision to lower my standards about how my life should be after college. The standards I set for myself were so outrageous, no wonder I was unhappy. All I concentrated on was how much fun my other friends were having together in Chicago. It's a hard pill to swallow when facebook flaunts how all my girlfriends are going out together and continuing their friendships while I was alone with a few friends in a new, unfamiliar city. A few things learned from this: Facebook lies and pictures on Facebook lie. Just because my friends are together, does not mean they aren't having just as hard of a time as I am. My decision includes not worrying about how much fun everyone else is having, rather worry about how much fun I am having and push the limits of how well I can function on the least amount of sleep (not so much worry- wrong word to use- more so focus on). It also includes being in the now. I have always said that life happens in the now, not tomorrow, but never really practiced my preachings. Constantly I worry about what will happen next week, but this weekend started the new. The farthest I am going to allow my self to think about is the next few hours. I am going to begin to use this city as my real playground- as my backpacking site. Everyone use to go on backpacking trips to Europe after college. Since clearly I don't have to funds for that, I will substitute Italy with Little Italy and China with China Town. I will treat this city every second like its my first time, seeing everything and exploring everywhere.

Going along with this revelation of exploring, I really got into character for Halloween on Saturday night - Naturally and fitting, I went as a tourist, dressed head to toe in "I love New York" stuff. That night was the perfect start to my new approach to this city. I adventured to a new friends house party in Alphabet city, wandered to a bar, followed by a slice of pizza, rode the subway at 2:30 am, asked a random guy for a slice of his pizza (surprisingly he gave it to me) and ended up back at my friend's house in midtown. Every part of that night was unplanned- just went with the flow and ended up being amazing.

Lesson Learned:

Just as Nike says, Just do it. AND, there is room for a second chance New York.

Peace, Love and Tourists,

B