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That's me! Happy to be working again; not quite thrilled to have so little time for other pursuits (e.g., this little site you're reading).
I do enjoy my job (Technical Writer for a large magazine publisher) tremendously and recognize how lucky I am to have found a position that challenges me daily and allows me to dig deep into my well of talents. Throw in some bright, interesting and friendly colleagues and an upbeat, positive environment and you've got one happy working girl.
It strikes me almost every day, in different ways, how much I had missed New York City in my 4 years away. Much as my sojourn to northern California was an extremely positive period in my life, I came to appreciate what I'd gained from living in New York even more while I was away. Now, the comparisons between NYC and San Francisco float around in my head constantly, whether relevant or not.
Living in San Francisco, I relished my 20-minute walk to work each morning--listening to music or NPR, taking in the sights of downtown, doing some people-watching, arriving at work refreshed and alive each day.
But now that I spend 30-40 minutes each morning on the subway, I realize how much I'd missed the best thing about non-automobile commuting: reading time! It took me months to finish a book in San Francisco because I spent so little time taking mass transit. Luckily, I now report to work a bit later in the morning than most, which means I usually get a seat on the train, which means a good half-hour a day of uninterrupted reading time. Delicious.
I've missed New Yorkers. In spite of their reputation as brash, arrogant, rude, loud (which, let's face it, many of them have earned), New Yorkers have a way of interracting with a level of warmth and familiarity I just haven't seen elsewhere. It's in the way the construction workers call each other "Mac" and laugh over a pizza, sitting on the sidewalk, hard hats in their laps. It's in the way store-keepers (and even the bagel cart guy who makes my iced coffee and always adds the perfect amount of Splenda) get to know their customers and call so many of them by name. It's in the way the local kids learn to ride the subway and the bus surrounded by hundreds of people who look and sound nothing like them and the way they grow up understanding that everyone in this world is a minority among certain people, in certain places.
I don't know. I just missed it.
That's not to say New York isn't a hectic, exasperating, frustrating, chaotic mess of a city. It is. It teems with life--some of it revolting--and the sidewalks explode with people and sometimes it takes me 5 minutes just to walk one block because there are just PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE everywhere and I can't breathe and I just want some peace and quiet and for fuck's sake, it's just impossible to find sometimes.
But the city suits me, in its own insane way. Good or bad, it's home. And, in spite of it all, I'm glad to be home.