The internship turned into dropping out of college, pursuing a career, getting to know a whole bunch of people and ultimately coming back to a place which I would label as home but really isn’t anymore. There’s a sense of irony in the decision to leave the hotshot agency I worked for by choice and calling it “progress”.

A snowy day in Soho

All of it started driven by career reasons. The experience of having worked in New York would significantly improve how peers perceived me and would automatically make my profile attractive for future employers. The notion of having worked in a different country in one of the major cities on the world automatically vets your skillset (at least, that was my train of thought).

Hereby, the decision to leave college was fairly straightforward. It’s a value tradeoff. Which investment (in time) will generate the most results? It’s a decision I took in a heartbeat.

Although that would be the pragmatic reasoning for the decision to move to New York, I would lie if it wasn’t partly running away from a life which scared me. A life, at that point, fueled by lost love, hate for the educational system and being eagerly ambitious. Most of all, it was being afraid living a life which was predestined by society, of which I wasn’t very sure if it would make me happy.

I longed for change, and realized it wouldn’t happen unless I created it myself. With appetite I stepped on that plane, as one of the many refugees crossing the Hudson craving for what could be.

As time passed by in Manhattan and Brooklyn, it fast-tracked becoming an adult (whatever that would mean). I wasn’t sure if the word ‘city’ truly defines what this place is.

Day by day you would discover the bright and the dark side of a complicated relationship with a place no-one properly can describe to you. Unless “you’ve experienced it yourself”, as calling it just “living there” would not give the city justice.

Here’s the strange thing: it’s very difficult to get a sense of feeling across to friends, family and strangers of what all of it meant.

There’s a certain beauty in meeting strangers, getting lost on the avenues, discovering weird restaurants and dating intriguing people. It’s realizing you find the best coffee and food in the most obscure places, you learn that Whole Foods really is too expensive. There’s the discovery of new neighborhoods and the thrill of seeing change as the place where you live has new restaurants and stores opening on a nearly weekly basis.

You go to expensive parties (as ‘work hard, party hard’ is an actual thing), a casual lunch with colleagues, you’re being pissed at train delays and listen to music while strolling across Central Park.

All of it, while you try and make a foreign place something familiar.

As you admire art at diverse places, you come to realize that this is likely the first and last time you’re there. Then there’s the people — oh the people. That one time you blacked out drunk, the other time being at a photographer’s party at some Chelsea loft sipping on champagne. The magnificent actors on Broadway, the struggling writers, the up-and-coming artists. You meet them all in the most diverse settings.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The funny thing is that all of it just happens with no effort or planning. Maybe that’s the indescribable magic.

What is more surprising about New York than anything else is that it’s mainly the notion of New York as an idea. It’s a place, almost indescribable what it means for you as individual living there. The rush, the thrill, the value of the people you meet. The inequality which you learn to ignore as easily as how much it shocked you when you just arrived.