New New York

I am not a native New Yorker. But, like many people in this city, I have given myself the title of “Honorary New Yorker.” I am not from here, and six years is not nearly enough time to explore the decadent history and fervent artistry of this place, but I’m on my way to getting there. I’m on my way to knowing.

Yesterday, I spent the day writing in the Milstein Division at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library. The heater next to me blew warm air onto my face as snow and freezing rain fell outside, and there was a faint rattling sound in the stacks—I found out as I left that it was the clacking of a keyboard as someone used a library computer to look up a book.

On days like yesterday, I can feel just how much I am a cliché—I am yet another young writer aspiring for greatness in the literary arts, and I believe that if I can make it in New York City, I can make it anywhere. I sat in that room, grinding out words as I waited for divine inspiration to strike me and make me write the next great American novel, one that will redefine what “American” is.

I came to this city not intending to be a writer. Before this city, I wrote in my journal, personal flash fictions of emotions that ran through me as I went through my teenage years. As a freshman at NYU, I wanted to capture all of the glorious hustle of living in a place so radically removed from what I had grown up knowing, and I did it in the two ways I best knew how: in photographs and in words. And New York has never stopped giving me reasons to take pictures and write, and write, and write. I didn’t come to this city intending to be a writer, but my god, it made me one.

(A quick note about the image above; this was one of the first Instagram photos I took, about four years ago in NYU’s Bobst Library.)

This isn’t to say that if you intend to be a writer you better get yourself to New York because it will magically make you one. (Just look at me and my magical transformation in just six years from not-a-writer to definitely-a-writer!) But New York has a way of taking what was already within a person and magnifying it. The city reflects back to us who we are in our entirety, and we make the choice what to amplify.

And sometimes, New Yorkers, Honorary or not, like to return the favor, and show the city what its citizens are made of.

(A quick note about the sticky note above; I did not write that particular one, but it is one of my favorites from the Union Square subway station.)

This post is in response to this week’s Discover Challenge: Finding Your Place. Check out a few more responses below!

• A Certain Place and Time | Me Ruling the Third and More
• Tonight I Want It To Rain | Life Confusions
• You Don’t “Belong” Anywhere | Confessions of a Reborn Girl
• backdrop to a life | thechangingpalette
• The Place I’m Most At Home | Rosemary Carlson, Freelance Writer