Why I moved to New York and some info on how to...

As I walked from my work place in Chelsea to the West 4th Street stop, something I've been doing lately with the weather being nice again, I realized that I'm never going to get bored in this city. When my depression was at its worst in Raleigh, years back, one of the things that made my life feel so monotonous was having the same commute home from work every day. I would make ridiculous detours, anything to not have to drive the exact same way home every day. I'd even make excuses to leave early and then go and buy coffee before work, just to change up the routine. When I left work today, I thought, "I'll just walk to West 4th Street instead of having to take two trains." I even walked a different way then I have in the past, all the way to 6th Avenue along 15th Street and then south to the station. Other days I've walked down 9th to Hudson to Bleeker and then hung out in Father Demo Square (which is actually the shape of a triangle) just to get a change of scenery and not have to dive right into the muggy subway platform and stand sweating for ten minutes waiting for the train. If I'm going to sweat I might as well take in the city.

I love exploring this place. My present problems and discontent aside, it never disappoints, this city. There will always be something to see, whether it be some old building, apartments I'll never live in, a park I would have never normally found, or just the people of this city going about their business half of them oblivious to it all. Or just life going by in a big city. I can't explain why this is so different from Raleigh. I admit there are things I came to love about Raleigh but perhaps a sheer lack of creativity brought on by my near paralyzing anxiety and depression when I first graduated college kept me from really discovering Raleigh. But either way, I needed a change of scenery, though I'm not naive enough anymore to think that the scenery is all that has healed my anxiety and depression.

Anyway, if there's one bit of insight that I've gleaned from the last 6 months it's this: That the best way to come to NYC is to forget all your belongings except the bare minimum and live in slight to moderate to terrible discomfort (depending on how you look at it) in someone else's apartment, month to month if you can swing it, until you are stable with your job and know what you can afford to live in. Of course, this is obvious and would apply to any city but I didn't think it applied to me. I thought I could go on living by myself, enjoying my solitude with all the random shit I'd accumulated comfortably arranged around me and simultaneously afford it all without having first established myself here. I was wrong. I jumped the gun. Now it's a question of whether or not it makes sense to do anything risky to fix it.

I heard today that my boss has put in a request to hire me part time. Which would mean a couple of things for me: steady hours, no limit on my hours and even some, gasp, benefits! We'll see how it goes. So, I may yet survive this, having done it the way I did, but I certainly feel like, especially after talking with a close friends who's lived here for 7 plus years, that I could have come off a lot easier if I had done the subletting thing and not worried about moving twice. Hell, here I am considering moving for the second time anyway!

I had a nice talk with this friend yesterday and, besides imploring me to get on Match.com, he gave me some really good advice about the whole thing. He's subletted for years living up here and is getting ready to give up his room in his Upper East Side apartment (1 bed in a three bedroom apartment for $975) to move into a co-op he just bought up in Bronxville. So he was showing me the room in case I was interested. At $200 cheaper then my current digs, and several square feet smaller, which might necessitate storage or getting rid of things, it might not be for me. But oh, how nice it would be to say that in my first year in the Greater New York Area I found a sublet in Manhattan. I love his neighborhood. It's around 71st and York Avenue, lots of restaurants, a really good beer bar on York Avenue that we hit up, and some really nice apartment buildings. It's actually quiet back there. But I'll probably have to turn it down.

I also don't know what's going on with subletting yet. I'm not getting very many responses and, increasingly, the prospect of having to worry about this place (the current apartment) while I'm renting in a new one irks me. Even though, I may possibly find a place I could go month to month with, if my subletter defaults on me, then I have to worry about getting them out and getting someone else in. Getting them out being the harder of the two tasks.

I may not even follow through with this at all and just stay here. The noise outside was only bad last week. Maybe I'll get used to it (As long as it's not one of the days where I have to work at 6am).

So right now, I don't know what's going to happen. My plan is to see how subletting goes and, if badly, ask the landlord about getting out of the lease if I don't manage to find a subletter. If it's too much of a fee, hell, I may stay. It's only 'til March after all. And I will have been here for 6 months already come the 7th of August.