1300 Days (Being a New Yorker is Hard)

If you've ever talked to someone who moved to New York or lived there for a while, you've probably heard them say that it is really hard to live in New York, and how expensive it is, and how the rent is absurdly high.  And you nod and listen, and you hear other people talk about crazy expensive it is in New York and how you would have to be crazy to move there, and you think, Yes, I know its expensive, and you'd have to be crazy to move there, but just because I told you I'm planning on moving to New York City, you feel the need to tell me every single reason I should not move there and just give up on all my hopes and dreams?

And then you move here and you realize how crazy expensive it is just to live here, and wonder how everyone else doesn't seem to have as much trouble paying for things as you do, and you wonder why you were stupid enough to move here without a concrete plan of where you were going to live and what you were going to do for work like it seems like everyone else in the whole city is able to do, even though its nearly impossible to find a place to live when you can't visit the place you're looking into moving and I don't know how people get job opportunities in cities they don't live in when they don't have contacts or friends or family to help them.

And you realize that its been over three years since you came to the city and you aren't doing any of the things that you set out to do.  Other than .. you know- living in New York City.

But do you live in New York City?  Or do you just work there, and then you go back to your room where you sleep before going back to work and on the weekend you waste what little precious time you have not working doing stupid things like rewatching your favorite new series on Netflix or distracting yourself with a game on your Nintendo 3DS or doing both at the same time for maximum distraction so that you don't have to think about that the fact that instead of doing something that might actually make you feel good about yourself, you are hiding away in your room, too afraid of failing at the things you wanted to do when you came to New York in the first place.

It's been 1300 days since I first got off the plane to start my "new" adventure in New York City.  It was supposed to be a start of a brand new chapter in my life.  I had hoping to feel like everything I had done would feel like it was leading up to this point, and now, my life would truly begin.

And then it didn't.

I found a place to live (in Brooklyn). I found a crappy job (in Manhattan). And I worked, and I submitted for some things, but not as much as I should have, and I didn't audition because I didn't have professional headshots and I didn't have the money to get new headshots, and I could barely afford where I was living and I was making hardly any money- In fact, I was making less money than I was spending just to live in New York so if I was a business things were going downhill, and I could see that, so I quit my job, hoping to find a better job, found an equally crappy job, moved out of that room into a cheaper room, quit my second job so I could focus on pursuing my real career and finally go those headshots.

And I didn't really audition for anything.  Oh, I auditioned for a couple things and was in a couple plays, but unlike the majority of people I worked with, I never had a plan for what I was doing after the thing I was doing.  I would audition for a week, trying to line up as many auditions as I could, would get 2-3 auditions, and then get cast in some off-off-off broadway show and stop auditioning because I'm working on this thing and I should really be getting a job since I'm losing a lot of money and its not like this gig is paying anything and OH GOD, I'm paying so much money for rent that I don't really have because I don't have an income and I don't have any money and how am I going to pay the bills and now the play is over and the people I met and worked with and was sort of friends with are gone and I never see them again and I do this a couple times with large gaps in between of doing nothing out of general depression and anxiety and getting a job for a while and then working in catering but I'm not really a go-getter enough to get enough opportunities to make enough money.

Then I get a temp job - I just realized I started this post with "you" and somewhere transitioned to "I" which I'm sure is a major English mistake as it confuses the audience, but I'm not going to change it, because this is being written in the moment - and I am making enough money to get by, not much more than enough to get by, but its better than nothing, right?  And after half a year I get hired by the company that takes over for the company that I was temping for.

Six months later, and here I am.  I make enough money to pay the bills, but not enough to save money or pay for health insurance, which- Oh god- what if something happens to me and what am I going to do next year if I have to pay the tax penalty for not having health insurance because I couldn't afford it? I have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt for a degree that as far as I can tell no one respects and doesn't help me get work, but as far as I can tell no one really respects the fact that you went to college or university at all, they're just interested in where you went and who you talked to because everything is about NETWORKING!  I have thousands of dollar of credit card debt on top of the student loan debt so a lot of my pay check goes to just paying off these debts, which is really depressing.

And I'm not auditioning because every time I look in the mirror I think I look terrible and I don't think anyone would cast me the way I look right now, and I'm not submitting for anything because I find it hard to care about anything anymore.  And I don't see shows, because I can't afford to and what shows would I see anyway?  And after working at my job for over a year, I'm so bored with it and don't understand how anyone can work the same job for longer than this after they've learned how to do everything and pretty much mastered it.

And being a New Yorker is hard.  Because no matter how you feel about money when you come here if you don't have money, your life becomes about money, about the fact that you don't have enough money, that everyone around seems to have enough, more than enough, far too much money than they deserve, and why is it that nobody else seems to have trouble paying the rent?  How can they afford to live in these amazing apartments, how can they afford to live in an apartment to the themselves and you have to share everything you have with someone just to scrape by.

And I just switched back to "you".  Weird isn't it?  I don't know what this blog is or if I'll ever write in it again, or if anybody will ever read this or read this far, but it's here.

I wrote it.  It exists.  And maybe that's enough for right now.