New York, New York

You know how everyone goes through that stage where they either want to be an astronaut or a dolphin trainer? Yeah, for some reason, I skipped that stage. The only thing that could have possibly made me want to become an astronaut was if New York City was located on the moon. I wanted nothing more than to go there, to soak it all in, and to become the greatest actress of all time. Well, New York City is still part of my plan. The acting? Not so much. I found that if at the age of 13, you still haven't been in a single play or pursued a single audition, you don't have a great deal of promise or competitive edge in the acting industry.

So I moved on. To what, you ask? At the time, I couldn't have told you if I tried. I knew one thing for sure. It would not be anything related to English or writing. I had this great grade school English teacher, but the only bad thing was that we were never allowed to use "be" verbs. I'm talking "am, is, are, was, were". Good luck with that. And then we would have intense, pretty-much-run-on-without-being-run-on sentences that we would have to dissect and label and diagram. Moreover, since it was at that time when people were still pretending to be concerned about childhood obesity before giving up on the issue altogether, our teachers were trying to sneak any sort of physical activity into the classroom that they could. So, depending on  how many parts of the sentence we failed to properly diagram, we would have to do that many push-ups. Needless to say, I hated English. But secretly (you have to promise not to tell anyone), I loved every stinking minute of it.

And when high school came along, my love for writing grew and I became reacquainted with words that I had forced myself to believe were no longer a part of the English language. Do you have any idea how great it is to write is? Oh. So great, let me tell you.

I was in love. With words. With the way words could flow so simply and so smoothly. With the way words could paint a detailed, intricate portrait. With the way words were merely letters who had friends. And with the fact that I could write in fragments and still be successful, just as I'm doing now. And I couldn't think of any better place to unleash my writing than in New York City, that glorious city that never sleeps. The Big Apple.

I'm still in love with writing, that's for sure. But I'm also in love with New York. The hustle, the bustle, the sheer wonder of it all. Thankfully, I've come to find that writing, NYC, and I will be very happy together.

Life is just so beautiful. Don't be afraid of letting it be just that. Beautiful.