Chapter 88: Crowds.

i know a girl who can just pick up and live anywhere. seriously. she has lived all over the country, been all over the world, and even now, is ready to pick and move yet again. she has the unfathomable capacity to pack enough items (clothes, toiletries, and all) for two months into a carry on bag even when she is going to places with varying climates. at this very moment, she lives in one of the biggest cities in the world and is about to move to the other side of the country in about two weeks.

clearly i'm shocked by this behavior, but what really shocks me about this how she never knows anyone when she moves to these new cities and places. she may know one or two people are most, but beyond that, she is a stranger in a strange land. the only reason i even know her is through utterly random events that happened through a friend of a friend. she has this uncanny ability of meeting strangers in coffee shops and while doing her laundry, exchanging numbers with them, and meeting them later for dinner.

this behavior of hers made me question the way i look at myself in the context of a crowd. i wouldn't move anywhere unless i knew at least a few people there, but is that really the way to look at it? living in nyc is living within a beast of people, languages, cultures, events, places, etc, so how could knowing 5 people in this mess make a difference? it is so easy to get lost in a crowd to the point where it can feel as if you are entirely alone while being surrounded by thousands of people. it can be a little too easy to siltently drown in this sea of people

Chapter 87: I heart.

as i've mentioned in this blog before, i moved to nyc at the end of august, and and at my two month mark, i'm looking back on what i thought this would be and what it's turned out to be. i know that it is always that quintessential dream of any fresh faced college student to move and make it in the big city, but that has truly been my dream. growing up in a small town where i could actually see the empire state building on a clear night instilled in me a sense of constant longing. however, living so close to the city meant that i didn't go there very often so i developed this incredibly idealized dream of what it could be - a dream based on fragments from movies and radio and anything else i could get my hands on. as most teens do, i had an incredibly ornate and grand design of what my life was going to be once i moved.

now that i'm here, i can honestly say that it is nothing as i had imagined. i forgot to imagine the being adult aspect of living in nyc. but as much as things can suck, i'm sure that i wouldn't be happier anywhere else but right here, right now.

i heart nyc.

Chapter 86: Compatibility

do children ever play with jigsaw puzzles anymore? from what i can tell, the term "jigsaw" only refers to that creepy man in that mask in those saw slasher movies... which i clearly saw (not). when i was younger, i had this huge kite puzzle that depicted children in a field playing with multicolored kites while their parents watched on, fairly generic. every time i opened that damn box to put it together again, three pieces would always inexplicably go missing. it didn't matter how careful i was to count the pieces or only take out the sky blue ones to start with or how i even put down a white sheet to "play" on just so i could see the pieces more clearly.

i became so desperate at one point that i took the side pieces and tried to cut them into the lost middle ones. it never worked, and in the end, i had a completely disjointed puzzle made up of extremely rough edges and random, rustic pieces strewn throughout. at the age of 10, this constitutes as a massacre of sorts. eventually, the puzzle was thrown away.

i would later learn that adults, with all their worldliness and wisdom, would have this same habit of mine of trying to take something that doesn't quite fit and attempting to force it into place. but substitute people for puzzle pieces.

it's shocking how many relationships i see in this world where the people involved simply are not compatible. this is certainly not limited to love relationships, either. it's shocking how many people are not willing to admit that they just don't mesh with another person. it's almost as if it's a mark of their entire purpose in life if they can't quite work well with another person. rather, they would prefer to subject themselves to awkward situations to either avoid admitting defeat or simply to not let the other person go.

the best way i know to combat this situation in my own life is to know the kind of piece that i am. by fully knowing and accepting my dips and curves and irregularities, i'll know the complementary piece who should fit along next to me, whether that's a person or a job or any other situation in life. and until then, i will no longer attempt to cut corners just to make things fit.