This last week, the hubby and I had the pleasure of visiting New York City for the first time ever. It was, in many ways, fantastic. It was, in many ways, terrible.
I have this problem, you see. I'm a bit of a regret junkie. I would like to have about thirty lives, and in lieu of that possibility, I would like to cram thirty lives' worth of experiences into this one. And I must admit that, in the years since I got married, I haven't been packing those experiences in as much as I'd like. I've experienced grad school, the turmoil of the failed first novel, some housewifery. I've had my first visits to New York, Scotland, a few cities in England, Glacier National Park, Big Sur, Disney World, and South Dakota. I've learned a lot about wine and cooking and recently learned how to make preserves. I've revisited a few cities like London, Paris, and Las Vegas with my husband--his first time in each. When I list it like this, it seems that I've really done quite a bit since 2007, but still I want more. I wish I'd had the chance to live in more places, to work in commercial publishing, to spend less time sitting on my couch in Eastern Washington.
Here's where the terrible stuff comes in: living in New York was one of those dreams that never came to fruition. And, yes, I know it's a little trite. But I often imagined getting a job as an assistant at a publishing house or literary agency, moving to New York, and spending a few years soaking up the city. Maybe going to grad school there. I've heard a lot of bad stuff about New York in the past few years--it's loud, it smells, and so on--but when we actually visited, I didn't find those things to be true, at least not in any way that would dissuade me from wanting to live there. I hoped, in some ways, that I might be allergic to New York like I am to London--but New York doesn't have the same type of pollution London does, and it didn't bother me at all. So I walked around the city feeling those pangs of regret that all I had was three days, when a greedy part of me really would have wanted three years.
One piece of our trip inspired these bittersweet feelings more pointedly than anything else: On our second night in the city, we found a little black box theater where Scott Adsit and John Lutz (from NBC's 30 Rock) were doing some improv. We stood in line, paid our five bucks each, and got to stand at the back of the theater and laugh our guts out. We got to use the dingy little bathrooms with their bad plumbing and amusing graffiti. And I couldn't help thinking, this is the type of place I might have worked, some small theater like this that hosted small plays and comedy shows and theatrical workshops. This is the type of place I would have gone once a week to laugh if I worked someplace else.
Two days later, I had a birthday. I am now 27 years old, which is an age I had never really imagined for myself. The likelihood of my moving to New York is now greatly diminished, and to be honest, I'm past the age where I would have found the small, dingy apartments and constant street noise and crowded subways romantic if I had to deal with them every day. I'm past the age where city living really appeals; I want to live somewhere I can raise children, with backyards and good schools, where I can have a little land to spread out in, maybe raise some chickens or goats, grow a pumpkin patch and tomatoes and zucchini. But what if I'd transferred to NYU instead of WSU? What if I'd had more confidence in myself that I could do it? What would life have been like then?
I guess it's like the number of licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop (which I did, in second grade, attempt to count): the world may never know.
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