You're not what you thought you were.

On New York, main character energy, and reconciling with the person you turned out to be.

What happens when you don’t become the person you thought you would be?

Last week, my husband and I took a 5-day trip to New York City. Somehow, neither of us had been before, despite pushing 30.

Since I was about 9 years old, probably, I was obsessed with NYC. Coming from a small, rural town where I never felt like I fit in, I was determined that someday I would live in Manhattan and have a cool bar or coffee shop that all my friends went to every day and I would probably be a famous fashion designer or work at a prestigious magazine.

I was raised on 00s rom-coms and sit-coms and all the other type of coms that romanticized New York, and city life in general, where young and beautiful and preternaturally witty people had grand adventures, and went to work maybe once or twice in a 28-episode season. Even when they were miserable, everything still seemed glamorous and full of possibility because they lived in New York Fucking City.

All of this to say, since I was a child, I was determined…