Beyond the honeymoon

It’s official:  the honeymoon period with New York City is over.

That statement requires some strong clarifications.  I’m not at all, of course, suggesting that this is in any manner or shape similar to how my honeymoon period with Pittsburgh ended (i.e., with me bitterly despising the city and desperately wanting to flee.)  I’m still deeply in love with New York City.  I still fully intend to spend a considerable chunk of my future – indeed, perhaps the rest of my life – right here in Manhattan.  I do not in the least bit doubt my decision to move here from South Florida.  And I’m very happy here.

However, the novelty factor – the “new car element”, if you will – has entirely worn off.  Seeing the Manhattan skyline upon returning from a long trip no longer unleashes the same type of visceral high that it once did.  Walking down 5^th Avenue, or Broadway, or through Central Park is no longer the sort of “magical” experience that it once was.  While I’m still awed by the subway system, my primary view of it now has largely been reduced to a utilitarian one – it gets me to work during the week and to social venues on the weekend (and hopefully it doesn’t break down and leave me stranded for hours under a river, as the L almost did en route to Williamsburg recently.)  And not that I was ever a fan of Times Square, but having an office there has made me loathe the locale in the same manner that I despise metropolitan Orlando.

To be sure, I do not in the least deny the veracity of the longtime assertion that it takes a full decade of life in this city to truly be a bona fide New Yorker; that it takes a decade to truly understand, on a fundamental level, just how things work here.   Now in my fifth month of residency here, I’m still quite the New York neophyte and far from some jaded insider.  But my attitude and perception of things has changed in a fairly significant way since my arrival here back in July – and in my humble opinion, that’s a very good, productive thing.

Then – particularly in the week or so before I commenced my new job – you might describe my outlook as the “Manhattan is my oyster” approach.  I bar-hopped at a ferocity which was intense even by my standards.  I took random walks of many hours throughout every nook and cranny of the city, taking in as much as I could.  I jumped into my new job with the enthusiasm, energy, and hubristic outlook of somebody looking forward to an imminent ascension to the ranks of senior management.  Everything was new; everything was exciting; most fundamentally, though, everything was an opportunity mine for the taking.

Somewhere along the line, reality kicked back in.  To reach the level of career success that I desire will require many years at the frenetic career pace that I now sustain.  My social network is scattered and dispersed, with only a small fraction in the New York environs; having switched firms and moved across the country, my professional network is nearly starting out again from scratch.  As documented here, many of the same problems from Miami followed me right up Interstate 95 to the Empire State.  Even at the hellish pace at which I explored the City for my first weeks and months, I felt as if I were barely scratching the surface, barely making a dent in the incomprehensibly massive array of stuff that is out there.   Oh, and another little thing – all of that complaining that I did in Miami about the paucity of young, educated, career-oriented professionals in South Florida?  It turns out that they’re all in New York – and all driven at my level, if not more, to secure the best in friendships, relationships, career opportunities, financial remuneration, and much more.  I remember vividly an experience from this summer when a ping pong event at a West Village bar, full of young folks, turned into a spectacle that could rival the Olympics (needless to say, given my notable lack of hand-eye coordination, I sat that one out and watched as a bystander in a state of semi-shocked befuddlement.)  Mucho competition, anyone?

This is the Big Apple at its finest.  It has a distinct way of pushing you to your finest and most refined level of accomplishment, though I must admit at times the “push” has been more like a rather forceful shove.

Where this has left me is with a series of parallel recognitions.  The first being that living in New York City will expose me to a series of opportunities that I truly would have never had in Florida; the corollary being that I will never fully capitalize on these opportunities by continuing to operate the level at which I operated in Florida.  I must – and I can – do better.

In those first months, the mere act of having accomplished the move to New York City – with an accompanying boost in career level and boost in salary - brought about a state of general exuberance.  The mere sight of the massive towers of Midtown brought about a peculiar sense of accomplishment.  That was the honeymoon.   Reality kicked in with the realization that gazing at awe at one of those skyscrapers does not pave the way to a corner office in any one of them; reality kicked in with the realization that merely moving to New York isn’t shit when you consider the hordes of people – my age or even younger – pulling in three times my salary at positions of influence far greater than mine.  Reality kicked in, fundamentally, with the realization that Manhattan is not an oyster that you shuck through random escapades and pointless promenades.

I repeat, again, to be clear – that honeymoon is over.  It was pleasant to engage in a nice bit of escapism and 20-something hedonism, but my overall ambitions are ever-so-slightly larger than that.

That nice little outpouring probably leaves many of you confused, and a typical response might go along these lines:   You’ve accomplished your dream of living in New York City – and a great neighborhood in Manhattan, on top of that.  You have a good job, perhaps by some standards a great one, at a time when many of your peer 20-somethings are struggling by at menial $30K gigs.  You have a great deal of fun, have great friends, and a strong work ethic.  What’s your problem?

Pardon me for being brash, but in the face of all of that I say – whoopty do! 

You see, had I been perfectly content with the pace at which things were going in my life, I would have kept my ass planted in South Florida and grown some deep roots.  That I aspired for life in Manhattan certainly has much to do with the fact that I grew increasingly repulsed by the vile conservative Red State stench of Florida political culture, but that aspiration was also strongly rooted in my belief that South Florida would simply never be able to provide me with the type of life – in all aspects - that New York City could.   My honeymoon with New York City ended at the very moment when I realized that a transplanted Floridian mentality and Floridian way of life will not unlock the New York City life to which I aspire.  You might say that the ending of the honeymoon was the inflection point at which I began to treat this city with the reverence and respect that it deserves.

Oh, bring the criticism.  Call me ungrateful, selfish, and irrational. I’m quite familiar.  One story in particular springs to mind.  The individual who graduated as the valedictorian of my high school class, one spot ahead of me – but then in typical fashion went on to attend a near bottom-tier, obscure university – was a Christian fundamentalist who once told me, from his typically modest-am-I Christian standpoint, that people like me will never be happy.  He would assert that even if I were to attain all that I want now – say, becoming a Partner making $1 million per year, owning a beautiful Manhattan apartment, marrying the man of my dreams, becoming a respected business titan, establishing a vast social circle, traveling the world, and so on – my eternal lust for more would simply lead me to adjust the bar ever higher, so that no matter how much I went on to attain, the goal would always remain impossible:  perennially attain more. 

It’s funny, because to me that is not a criticism but rather the ultimate compliment.  What he and so many others never will understand is that you can appreciate what you have now – which I most assuredly do - without settling for the backwards notion that it is the maximum that you can or should ever have.  I will openly, proudly admit that should I be admitted to the Partnership of a major global consultancy at age 30 and increase my annual income to over $1 million, I would immediately ponder how I could grow my book of business to double, triple, perhaps quintuple or more that income figure over the course of my career.  I will openly admit that should I marry the man of my dreams, I will continuously work to strengthen and take our relationship to the next level.  I will openly admit that there will never be a day of my life, no matter how long I live and no matter how much I accomplish, when I will sit back, sigh, and proclaim “Well, that’s it!”

So yes, the honeymoon with New York City is over and it’s time to get serious about maximizing the time that I have here – be it 1 more year, 5 more, or the rest of my life.  The honeymoon is over, and I expect to enjoy myself much more as a result.  Bring it!

J