A Lot of Consonants

One year ago today I left Portland (with its 75-degrees-and-breezy perfect summer conditions) and boarded a plane to New York, where the air outside JFK felt like a damp, scratchy towel that had been left lying on a radiator. I loaded my bags into the trunk of a cab and sped away from the airport, and as we drove along Atlantic Avenue “Empire State of Mind” came on the radio, and the cabbie turned up the volume and rolled down the windows, and at last there was a breeze. I gave him a big tip and hauled the bags up four flights of stairs to my new apartment.

In the past year I have made new friends, reconnected with old ones, interviewed presidential candidates, fallen asleep next to my desk at 1:30 a.m., gone to the New York Aquarium, eaten a LOT of tacos, broken up with my boyfriend of eight years, moved from that fourth-floor walkup to a building with an elevator, gone from having two cats to having one cat, cut my hair short, walked across the Williamsburg Bridge despite a lifelong fear of bridges, cried on three train lines (F, Q, R), gone to all the checkups I skipped when I was a freelancer with patchy health insurance, been diagnosed with a not-life-threatening but annoying chronic disease, written some things that made me chuckle, found the perfect pair of black boots, bought houseplants, been the first person in the office and the last one out, seen Bruce in concert for the first and second times, taught a class, read a slew of good books, met some internet friends IRL, gone to the movies alone and with other people, swapped my Blackberry for an iPhone and learned to love avocados.

What I’m saying is that on balance it has been a pretty good year.