Testing, testing, N, Y, C

New York is a test not coming easily for me. Sometimes I feel like I don’t actually know anything or anyone here yet. There is so much to learn. Where does one begin?

I arrived in New York with an idea of what I want to become here – a grad student and career opportunist. I walked off the plane with my focus too narrowly set, and skipped over some important lessons. I know the local library better than my neighborhood pub. My work lunches are spent hitting the books, instead of the streets. I began studying GMAT test workbooks, when I still need to be studying maps of Manhattan.

I’m in a hurry to flourish with my New York career and education (and willing to put in the work), but risk failing at life because I’m taking shortcuts in making this my home first. Starting tomorrow, I’m lifting my head out of the books long enough to take a good look around and discover why I should want a career and education in this great city.

Asylum for the subway commuter

In the spirit of a novice international traveler, I’ve been exploring New York City neighborhoods. Sometimes everything looks the same. I find myself walking in circles, mistaking North for South and experiencing déjà vu in places I’ve never been. On the other hand, sometimes nothing looks familiar. It actually feels like I’m in a foreign country. I’ll find myself in a cultural or ethnic pocket where few people look like me and signs in English are hard to come by.

I think I’ve found the one consistently neutral ground. Sometimes a traveler needs domestic refuge, but I’m not across the ocean backpacking through Europe. I’m twelve stops down the line in Flushing, Queens, with a backpack. I wander, scanning the street for an inviting door. Storefront signs are clearly visible over low bobbing heads, however, I’m challenged by what I assume are Chinese characters on everything. I pull up my phone’s GPS to see if an “embassy” is nearby. Sure enough, three blocks away is a Starbucks.

Whenever I feel like I’ve stumbled into “the bad neighborhood,” I just search for “Starbucks” on my phone and I’m led back to civilization. It may be a played out, unoriginal coffee shop, but it’s home. Just like America sucks for being blind to the rest of the world, it’s still home. We live here because there are things to like about it. And there are definitely things to like about Starbucks, like their white chocolate mochas!

Today, I accidentally spilled my entire white chocolate mocha all down a chair and onto the floor. Within minutes, a team of Asian baristas were mopping it up, and I had a replacement drink in my hands. I didn’t even have to tell them what I needed replaced. No matter where I am, Starbucks pretends to know me, and really knows my coffee, even when it’s been spilled and spreading across the floor.

Sometimes you gotta fit in to get in

After a few weeks in New York, I realize that this place doesn’t just open its doors and show you to a seat with your name on it. Instead it's like a giant puzzle with millions of interlocking pieces. The puzzle spreads for miles and has been worked and reworked for hundreds of years. When a new piece comes along, it finds an edge and tries to cling-on for dear life. But the first edge tried is never the right fit. Most people quickly move their pieces and keep trying new edges until they find the right one.

My whole life I’ve been called stubborn and impatient. Which is why I don’t do puzzles.

I’m the newcomer who would rather force his piece to fit. I shift and shove, smashing the tabs until the piece is almost unrecognizable in my attempt to make it fit.

I expect that New York will change me as I relentlessly wiggle my piece into the puzzle. I’ll be a different person when I finally feel that it fits – hopefully the struggle will make me harder, stronger and wiser.

NYC, aren’t you going to introduce me?

After months of planning, much excitement and a few tears, today marks the end of my second week living in New York. There isn’t much to report yet. Everything is unpacked. The furniture has found a place to rest, at least temporarily. Nothing is hung on the walls, except bed sheets that, for now, are doing their best to be window curtains. It’s not the home I want it to be yet. And I really hope this city will become home.

This was also the first week I worked from the office in Midtown. To add some perspective, it was my first week working corporate business hours and commuting daily to an actual office in over a year. Even though I left Los Angeles with my work ethic intact, there will be something to miss about rolling out of bed, throwing on some gym shorts and stumbling down the hallway to a sun-filled living room to work from home. Returning to the city’s daily grind is going to be a slow adjustment. Hopefully being in the company of eight million workaholics will help nurture the process.

There are plenty of things to like about New York, but it may take some time to figure out what I like about it. So far I like never having to get behind a steering wheel. But that isn’t enough to light a fire under me and keep me motivated. With this move, unlike my last, I realize that what makes a place a home is friends. I’m going to intentionally sound like one of those over-dramatic divas on a reality competition show. When I moved to LA, “I didn’t come on this show to make friends.” I moved for an acting career, and for a year and a half I didn’t focus on much else. With that ambition behind me, I’m looking for a second chance this time.

At home in Minneapolis I had (and still have) a lot of really good friends, who two years later, can still predict what I’m thinking. Right now I’m thinking that they are what makes me still refer to their home as my home. Maybe someday New York will be home.

How about a Nice introduction?

Hello, New York. How rude and un-Minnesotan of me. We haven’t been properly introduced. (This means I want to talk about myself more.) Let’s skip the handshake and go straight to the good stuff. There’s a nasty flu going around. Wouldn’t want you (really mean me) to catch anything. (I mean, who knows where you’ve been.) You can call me Mr. Nice.

Webster would say to be nice is to be amiably pleasant and kind. Hmm…well, isn’t that nice?

You see there’s nice and then there’s Minnesota-nice. If Webster had a definition for Minnesota-nice, it would include words like passive aggressive, insincere and sugarcoated. These not-so-nice qualities are not exclusive to Minnesotans, but we find a way to make them seem nicer, even if we aren’t feeling so nice. It’s not in our nature to say or do anything that would cause someone to be put off or take offense. We get our point across in other ways. Like buying our upstairs neighbor a brand new pair of slippers for Christmas instead of just telling them that they walk too loud at night.

Minnesota-nice is a personality trait (or disorder) that is hard to kick. I lived in Los Angeles for two years, and that didn’t cure me. LA is pushing its own brand of artificiality. Now, as a New Yorker in training, I look forward to discovering the truth and sincerity behind some of the country’s nicest people.

Twins follow me to a Shining new place

Have you ever left something somewhere and then it shows up somewhere else where you have never been? How did it get there? You couldn’t have put it there. In horror movies this would often be the case with a possessed doll.

The inattentive mother could have sworn that little Sally’s doll was in the closet where she stuffed it. How then does it suddenly appear seated in the back of her car! Its beady eyes glare at her through the center rear-view mirror. Before we know it, the doll is creeping on two plastic legs and strangling the mother from behind until the car runs off the road and crashes into a tree. Mother is unconscious, but plastic is pliable.

I’ve only just arrived in New York, but somehow I’ve been followed…

Like the little boy in The Shining, I take a moment to enjoy my new surroundings. My wheels are finally turning. I round the corner and get stopped in my tracks. Twins! Ahhh!

My hometown Minnesota Twins are in New York playing the Yankees for the American League Division Series.  For me, it’s a little taste of the old mixed with the new. I’m not a Yankees fan yet, but I’ll probably always have a soft spot for the Twins. Just not the kind that wear dresses and want to stab me in my soft spot.

Waiting to enter the promise land

I sit poolside in Vegas downing a Bloody Mary and contemplating the start of something new. I’m in a purgatorial state of waiting. With life as I knew it behind me, I’m heading in the Right direction, but penance is due before I can be let in.

My hometown friends from Minneapolis have invited me on a weekend sabbatical in the city of sinners, Las Vegas. It’s the perfect bachelor weekend for a young man making his way from Los Angeles on a one-way trip to a new land full of promise -- New York City.