3 Things I Forgot About New York City

I'm back in the city for two weeks.  Every time I return, it takes me a few days to adjust, and there are always a couple quirky NYC ticks/qualities that catch me off guard.  Let's be real, there are a MILLION, but these are a three I forgot about THIS time:

1. Eye gaze.  Walk down an active street in the city and you'll notice, everyone is looking in either two directions: downward (either at their phones or a few feet ahead), OR, directly ahead and slightly above eye level. This is why, I believe, you often see friends or acquaintances literally bumping into each other, rather than spotting one another ahead of time. People aren't generally looking, they're walking.

2. Frozen Yogurt. People being obsessed with it.  People eating it, all the time.  Pink Berry. 

3. The smell.  This only lasts a few minutes, right when I'm entering the city.  It's so hard to describe.  There's the obvious top notes- cement, dirt, skin, garbage, then the middle notes- subway tunnels, food carts.... but the base note?  You know when you don't wash a pair of jeans for a month?  It's kind of like that. 

And 4 things I always remember: 

1. Tourists.

2. The abundance of beautiful, fashion-forward-subway-riding-women.  Dang. Where'd you get those shoes?

3. The precarious nature of a cab ride.

4. "Stand Clear The Closing Doors Please." 


P.S. Did you see this chart from the New Yorker?  Pick a subway line, find a spot, and see the median household income. Fascinating....and shocking.


JMB 

(photo from Renovatio)

My Fool Proof Guide to Hitting On A Woman

Recently, I was hit on by a guy at a bar.  His pick up line was: do you have facebook?

It was so eye opening that I thought, I have to write about this.  So here are four little rules I think should always apply...

1.  Read body language.  It tells you everything you need to know, I swear.  Is she relaxed, dancing, swinging her arms? Or are her arms pinned down by her sides? Is she constantly checking her phone (read: another man) and clinging to her girlfriend? These are all signs!  If you look back at photos of Brad and Jennifer on the red carpet months before their tragic divorce, their pelvic bones were facing away from one another.  It’s ALL there. People study this stuff!

2. Do not linger.  Lingerers are the worst.  They circle, they lurk, and most of all, they send off the message that they are preparing themselves.  Eeek! I don’t think it’s really a turn on to anyone.  

3. Do not start off by offering to buy her a drink.  This thing happens where the girl feels pressured and obligated to accept and speak to you, even if she isn’t interested.  Start up the conversation first.  Get ten minutes into it.  Is she still smiling? Is she leaning in to hear you? Then buy her a drink. 

4. Do it solo.  There's something about "teaming up" with a friend or two, then approaching a group of girls together, that comes across as a little too goal oriented, and kind of like a cop out!

What do you think? Have anything to add? Bar culture, in general, is so odd...

JMB 

(photo via tumblr) 

Do I Go To My Middle School Reunion?

If you asked me what my worst memory is, I’d tell you: middle school.  Three years at a tiny Episcopalian School with annual Christmas pageants and uniforms.  Besides having a cute boyfriend and few sweet friends, my middle school experience was fairly excruciating.  There was endless bullying.  There was an itchy plaid skirt.  There was getting my period in the middle of history class.  There was this unacceptably miserable English teacher who looked like she wanted to hack up some spit and then murder us all.  During chapel everyday I silently prayed and asked for Elijah Wood to rescue me (or at the very least, ask for my number).  After school, I often went to my friend’s house across the street and binged on powdered donuts. Mostly, there was this general feeling, all the time, that I desperately wanted to escape.  I look at middle school girls now and they seem so small and very innocent, but I remember feeling deeply old and weathered.  I dreaded high school.  I dreaded girls, their cattiness, the way they could be SO mean.  And then I was mean, too, and that didn’t really work. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

The other day, I got an email about the reunion coming up.   And instead of just dismissing it, I starting thinking about what it would be like. We all practically lived together during the most awkward times of our lives, and I’d love to see my formal classmates, all blossomed and living their adult lives.  I imagine it’d be kind of awesome and awkward!  

(and here's the song that got me through middle school)

JMB

The Book That Changed My Life

 

The most common and frequent question I think I ask my 22 year old self over and over again, is......

Is this normal? 

Like, is what I'm doing/thinking/feeling/wanting in the realm of normal?  Because "normal" right now seems like an incredibly vague and wishy-washy place.  A shrink, in this case, would be useless. ("do you think it's normal?")

And then I got this book as a gift.

It's frank, loving, and hilarious.  Cheryl Strayed does something as a writer that I really admire and strive for: she isn't afraid to go there.  She doesn't pull any punches.  What results is something kind of spectacular-- anything that might normally come across as cheesy is so unapologetically so that it works....really works.  She's better than any shrink because she basically says, "maybe it's normal, maybe it's not, but who gives a shit? Own it, embrace it, ask it questions.  Push it around a little."  

I highly recommend it. 

Have a great weekend, everyone! See you Monday :) 

JMB

(Collage from The Rumpus)

On One of The Coolest People I've Met This Year

There’s a guy in town who’s a mini celebrity. He’s tall, with a healthy mop of brown hair and an easy smile.  He looks like a cute Where’s Waldo and he’s fearless: last year, he stepped out of his backdoor in Pennsylvania and walked across the country.  He had a backpack, some water, and a tape recorder.  He was twenty three.  For an entire year, he walked the highway and spoke to anyone who would talk to him.  He just wanted advice.  He wanted to meet people and listen to their stories.    

Here’s what really floors me about the whole thing.  Besides having an end goal (sinking his feet into the Pacific Ocean), he didn’t really have the whole thing fully planned.  He often didn’t have places to sleep at night, and even had to sleep under a bridge a few nights.  He literally lived day by day, and he walked- he walked 4,000 miles.  

To me, he is a creature of another species.  I want to learn from him, because I am so unlike him.  I still kind of panic if I realize I have to spend the night at someone’s house without a toothbrush.  I like planning so much that I’ve realized it actually holds me back. Moving here was barely planned, and I think that’s why it actually worked out so well. 

Anyway, I want to share his story with you.  It’s truly, really fascinating.  Take an hour tonight, stretch your legs, and listen.  I think you will enjoy it! (Sorry, ladies, he's taken...)

JMB   

(photo from his blog) 

9 Things I've Admitted to Myself As I've Gotten Older

1.  That I don’t like skim milk.  Somewhere along the line, some woman’s magazine engrained in me that skim milk is the answer to all skinny girl’s happiness and that I wouldn’t notice the difference…but I do.  It's not as good.  I'm sick of pretending. 

2. That not everyone will like me, I don’t like everyone, and the world continues to spin. 

3. That I don’t go running because I enjoy to run or because I get a runner’s high but simply because I know, without fail, that it provides my mind and body with good and healthy things.  That’s all.

4. That pears actually taste good.

5. That I was in love with my high school biology teacher.  Please, I hope you don’t see this……

6. That I’m still not okay with my mom being right.  With time, Mom, with time. 

7.  That I get quickly turned off by shy, quiet people, and often dismiss them as non-friend material, when, in fact, some of my greatest friends have at first been painfully shy.  (Hi Lucy A, Shannon H, Sasha DB).   I still need to work on this. 

8.  That I am a “horse girl.” Shudder.

9.  That getting 7 hours of sleep doesn’t constitute as being sick.  

There's so much more...what have you admitted to yourself recently? 

 JMB 

(photo by me) 

Three Shockingly Simple Things that Make a Relationship Work

I met him at a Halloween party the day before Hurricane Sandy hit.  We danced to Azealia Banks and then snuck out onto the porch where we drank a beer in the wind. At one point, I took his hand and said, “I feel like you know me, and I know you.”

Weeks later, he would poke fun of me for this.  I still cringe when I think that I actually said that, that I took this guy’s hand in mine thirty minutes after we met. It was one of those heady, alcohol soaked, 22 year old girl moments…you know what I mean.   

There’s six solid years between us.  That's six years of his own experience, with relationships, heartbreak, falling in love...and this is what I've learned so far: 

1.   It’s okay not to spend every minute together.  It’s easy to end up spending all your time together, but I think it’s important to spend just as much time apart.  We both have our own projects, our own ways of passing a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes it can be oddly difficult to walk away from him, but once I’m on my own, I can check in with myself (then light candles and play Sheryl Crow). 

 2.  Value your time together.  One night we were watching a movie, and I received a text from a friend.  My phone was on the bedside table, so naturally I checked it, and then responded.  Another text, another response. Repeat x 25.  Finally, he turned to me.  I hadn’t even realized how that might be annoying.  Now I put my phone away during date nights, and he does the same.  It’s such common sense but it makes a difference. 

3.   Take it day by day.  I have the unfortunate tendency of wishing, all the time, that I could control the future.  I call it “anxiety fantasizing.”  He encourages me to stay in the present moment with our relationship.  I actually panic slightly, when I realize that I haven’t been planning my future, but when I force myself to take a deep breath, I relax and eventually feel kind of...relieved.  It's much more manageable to just know you have to tackle one day instead of every single day ahead of you for the rest of your life.

(photo of the Royal Lovebirds via CNN)

Why I Left New York

Almost six months ago, I packed a suitcase and left New York City.  I literally just left. 

I needed to get away.  You know when you’re having a dreary day and you feel swallowed by a lopsided, uncomfortable haze and you decide, with incredible effort and bravery, to just go outside and look at the sky?  And then, very suddenly, that haze lifts?

That’s why I left home.  I had screwed up a relationship, I had quit my job, and New York was feeling like the inside of my head; claustrophic, distracted, and constantly going, like the line at Starbucks.

So I took a bus to Cape Cod, with one intention: to pick one goal for myself, and just do it.  This, in itself, seemed foreign and refreshing.  I chose to write an article for the Modern Love Column of the NYTimes.  I spent thirty days writing.  I submitted it, had a drink, and then just waited.  I got my rejection email during a walk home.  I remember feeling oddly rejuvenated. I was walking up a hill, panting, and I realized I was walking fast because I wanted to get home and write more. 

…Fast forward six months later, and I’m still here!  Now I know every sound of this creaky house. I have new friends and the start of a novel, and one full winter of uninterrupted writing, reading, cooking, and THINKING.  I’ve adjusted to life without internet.  I still love my quiet mornings but now I plan my weekends with someone.  Being twenty-two is like nothing else.  No, you know what it’s like?  It’s like PMSing 24/7.   It’s exhausting.

When I arrived here at the end of October, the haze lifted.  It was simple and tangible, it just lifted. Every once in awhile, this new feeling creeps over me.  It tingles slightly, like being sprayed by a mist of water, and I realize that it’s the absence of that haze, of wanting to escape.  I want to be here.  I also want to tell you things, my readers, things I think and notice everyday, simply because I think you will enjoy relating.

See you tomorrow:)

JMB  

(photo by moi)