Waxing poetic about 20 years in New York City

The city that dreams are made of (embrace the cheesiness)

This weekend marks 20 years that I’ve lived in New York City, and I’m feeling nostalgic. There’s something so satisfying about looking back at where you started and seeing how far you’ve come, even though the path is never straight.

I was a total cliche when I first came to NYC in the fall of 2003. I arrived with just a couple of suitcases, no job, no furniture, no friends. Cue Taylor Swift. (Though that was years before “Welcome to New York.” My soundtrack of those early NYC days was mostly Belle and Sebastian and mix CDs that Ken made me, and I think I still had a Discman.)

I still remember Ken dropping me off at my first apartment on Clinton Street. I found it on Craigslist and shared it with two recent NYU grads who had already lived there for a couple of years. I had a teeny-tiny room, and my beautiful roommates were both over six-feet tall. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, where nothing is quite the right proportion and everything feels a bit topsy-turvy. I was totally overwhelmed by it all.