One Year in NYC
Thoughts on commitment.
I moved to NYC on June 20, 2022. It’s now June 26, 2023. I want to take a moment to reflect on this past year — my first year post-grad.
I’m by no means qualified to give life advice. I’m 23 years old and made a cross-country move after graduation, as many people have — it’s not exactly earth-shattering stuff. But one thing this move helped me realize is that inertia is very real. A life at rest tends to stay at rest; a life in motion tends to stay in motion. Change is daunting when you’re stagnant. Once you start, it’s just work. These massive, paralyzing quandaries — how am I going to pay rent? How am I going to find roommates? How am I going to find an apartment? — arrange themselves into a to-do list:
Update resume
Update cover letter
Apply to 10 jobs / day
Roommate-search post on Facebook Marketplace / Instagram story
Make a spreadsheet for budgeting
Comb through StreetEasy
It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated. It’s just work.
When I moved to New York, I made a bucket list of things I wanted to do not just as a New Yorker, but as a new grad. I came up with three things:
Join a sport.
I was sick of going to the gym and hitting the stationary bike. I wanted to join a community where I could meet people, move toward measurable milestones, and learn a new skill.
Find a creative community.
I’d been making videos, writing, and drawing for a long time, but always solo. It wasn’t something I shared with others in a meaningful way.
Volunteer.
I wanted to do some work that wasn’t fundamentally about me.
Before I moved, I read a book called “The Second Mountain.” It’s about people who started over: people who spent years climbing the mountain of their careers, chasing personal success, only to reach the top and realize it felt empty — and then set out on a new path, climbing their Second Mountain. A mountain that is often less about themselves and more about others, less about freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want, and more about commitment.
Commitment can be scary — it ties you down to things; it makes you accountable in ways that might not be convenient.
This book makes the point that intentional commitments — ones you believe in and are capable of fulfilling — are also the things that make your life meaningful. Teaching students, coaching a soccer team, adopting a dog — these things are commitments, big and small, that tie you down in some way, that limit your freedom. But they’re also the things that make a life rich.
In my own small ways, I’ve been making commitments over the past year. If I had to identify a theme for this first year in New York, it would be commitment.
One year after moving to the city, I’m a second-stripe white belt under Renzo Gracie. I go at least three times a week, an hour each time, and I’ve been doing that for nine months now. Join a sport — check.
I’m a volunteer GED tutor out in Brooklyn. Volunteer — check.
I haven’t found a creative community yet. But I’ve made my commitments to this community, online, that I’m building. I’ve been on YouTube for years, posting whenever I feel like it — once every six months on average. But in the past two months, I’ve made the commitment to be consistent, to make a video every week. And while, in the first 4 years of being on YouTube, I garnered 47 subscribers, in the past 2 months, I’ve reached 620.
I also met a girl and started an amazing relationship — another commitment I’m grateful for beyond words.
That’s year one in New York City. Here’s to many more.