To be a good person; to do good, to make others feel loved, to help them.
To feel whole myself, to feel at peace, and one with nature, god, energy, life — whatever you want to call it.
To explore and meet characters and to not judge them off the bat — something I have trouble doing most of the time. To explore other: places and people.
To inspire and to be inspired.
To love, deeply and purely.
To connect.
To know myself.
To grow.
I have tried to write about this SO many times over the past two years, but I feel like I’ve never quite captured what I’ve really wanted to say. Walking through Bally’s Wild Wild West casino in Atlantic City yesterday, I think I got closer to it than ever before.
City friends of mine (read: not lifelong Queens peeps) had had drinks at the Met Friday night. It’s something that I have always vaguely wanted to do, but also something that I have always put off, something I can do “at some point in the future.” Learning who had attended the event (Chicago-natives, Ohio-natives, California-natives, etc.), made me realize something. I am not as enthusiastic about going out and living it up in the city because, 1. I’ll admit, I’m in a relationship, and I prefer cuddling in A/C to high heels and tight dresses on a humid-as-fuck July night, and 2. I’ve always lived here. I’ve never felt that my time is finite here, that I need to squeeze out the magnificence of New York now, “while I’m here,” because I’ll eventually move back home to be closer to my family.
I never used to think that I’d ever leave New York. I honestly imagined a long life lived on the Upper East Side; I’d grow rich from writing (ha!) and buy a townhouse, and yes, shock gasp, raise children in Manhattan that go to (!!!) public school. Perhaps I’ll write about my escalating struggles with trying to prove to City Friends that the New York City Public School System is not for degenerates and gun-toting gangsters — I swear one person actually said once, “I guess I could send my kid to public school but… yecchh,” — though I digress. My point here is that I’ve always believed New York would be there for me to enjoy. It has been the backdrop of my entire life, and I believed it always would be.
I don’t particularly care about status, social circles, Saks, or the East Village. Let me repeat, and this is going to sound pretentious: the East Village is to me, whatever the local college bar crawl was to you. The East Village is underage drinking, puking, bad decisions, sugary cocktails, PBRs, lanky guys with floppy hair who think they are smarter than they are because they read The Week. It’s where I spent several college (and high school) nights, barhopping as Amy Bernstein with my fake ID, and kissing manboys to get over whatever crush of mine was going unrequited at the moment. As your adult selves, would you really want to spend every weekend hanging out in your hometown’s parking lot, drinking Natty Light till the cops chased you home?
That’s why I choose to live and play on the UES as an adult. But here’s the thing, and I’ve never hit on it until now: I’m jealous of you newbs. I’m jealous that this all gets to be exciting and new and exhilarating for you. And while I am still able to capture that feeling sometimes, it’s almost not enough. I’m beginning to feel a little restless. On the heels of starting a new job at a welcoming and comforting new organization that I truly believe will help me discover a new level of understanding, maturity and, yeah, spirituality, I kind of also feel that this will be my last job in New York. That I’m poised to leave after a couple of years to set up shop somewhere new. I don’t know yet where that will be, and I don’t know what could possibly compete with New York, but that’s just it: New York has always been home to me. And I’ve always been a girl that likes a challenge.
Cupcakes. Black Forest Cake. Chocolate frosting. Lady fingers. Twinkies. Chocolate chip cookies and brownies with cream cheese frosting.
I don’t usually crave many sweets; in fact, I don’t usually eat many at all in my regular diet of salty potato chips, salty french fries, and salty Italian breads (see where I’m going with this?). But I decided yesterday to begin a 3 (to 4, if I can manage)-week-long yeast-free diet, after at least a year of my immune system attacking me and/or simply shutting down. I’ve had bad allergies, bad eczema, and other ladygirl problems that have pretty much confirmed what everyone in my 5th grade class must have thought after I missed 57 days of school: I should really just be living inside a bubble.
This means I’m excommunicating bread, all fruit, most grains, and sugar, the biggest culprit, from my life for the next month. The interwebs tell me not to drink coffee either, but there isn’t a fat chance in hell I’m going to give up coffee, so I’m still drinking a full cup o’ my black and bitter bolt of energy. The diet is essentially the (’04 Pre-Prom) Atkins diet. I successfully held out for quite a while on the Atkins diet back then, however the Atkins diet allowed — and encouraged — cheese. This doesn’t.
The first day of this diet was relatively fine, considering I decided to start after I’d already had a bowl of (multi-grain!) Cheerios for breakfast. But this morning has been brutal. After a breakfast of 3 scrambled eggs and tomatoes (I’m not trying to lose weight, I’m trying to eradicate my health problems), and a lunch of leftover sausage, peppers, and more tomatoes, I am literally CRAVING sweets. Craving – not a light, fleeting thought about how a cookie might be nice to tie me over until dinner, or the quiet consideration of a few vanilla wafers with some tea.
I am desiring all sweets I can think of. The red velvet cupcakes from Two Little Red Hens that Bethenny Frankel keeps talking about, the melt-in-your-mouth freshly baked donuts that Christina and I used to eat on the way upstate to go apple picking, pumpkin muffins and almond biscotti from my favorite Sleepy Hollow coffee shop, even the fucking LivingSocial.com cupcake that appears in EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEIR ADS with the dollop of pink frosting… and I don’t even LIKE frosting!
It is obvious to me that these cravings are due to my dramatically cutting sugar out of my diet. And to be honest, I feel much better having just written about all the desserts that I’m craving. It has momentarily subsided. I think the intensity of the cravings should subside after about 3 days; I hope so, at least. Until then, I’ll take great comfort in the fact that I’ve allowed myself to continue eating the Most Delicious Chips in the World, as I’ve just recently realized how healthy they are (for however healthy a potato chip can be):
Having long been obsessed with all things salt, and more importantly, all things potato, I have loved a great many different brand of chip over my years: Ridges, then Lays, and now, this beauty. After eating it almost every single day for the past 9 months (I should be embarrassed by that, but I’m not), I have just now realized that it has no trans-fat, or hydrogenated fat, is cooked in sunflower oil, and is, uh, Natural. Yeah, I see that it’s written on the bag, but I usually just look for the blue on the bag and buy it in a salt-induced craze only to scarf it down so quickly that I don’t stop to think about how they were made!
In any case, I highly recommend that everyone try these if they haven’t. As a self-proclaimed potato aficionado, these are the best potato chips out there by a mile.
