After running around New York for the fall semester, I busied myself with traveling out of the city in the spring. Between visits to friends, shoots out of town, and my sister's upcoming wedding, I was finding excuses to take a break from the constant roar of New York. It is, after all, a far cry from the small town I grew up in or the comparatively tiny city I spent my undergrad in.
But recently, the return voyages have brought me excitedly back. I'm no longer dragging my feet from the bus station or airport. I'm eager to return, to walk in my creaky front door, and dump my weekend bag in my bedroom and just collapse onto my comfy, old, and beg bug free bed. I'm happy to be home.
Which means that the inevitable happened. I fell in love with New York. Everyone told me that it takes a year to fall in love with New York, and unsurprisingly, they were right. I thought that that was a pretty undesirable quality for a city.. It shouldn't take as long, it shouldn't be as hard, I shouldn't have to cry on public transportation so much. Right? I'd just hate it forever.
Nooopppeee.
I won't sugar coat the first six months. They were painful and hard and I really resented New York. I wanted more nature and less urine, more pristine walkways, less day old garbage rotting in the street. But you get used to dodging dog poop and weird weekend train schedules, and then.. One day, it just hit me that I was happy here. I was excited by the energy that once exhausted me.
But I still needed to escape the city to feel a longing for it.
It's not really a part of the artistic process, which is what I try to document in this blog. But quiet moments with loved ones is an important part of life for me and a major source of inspiration. And what is the artistic process if it ignores the parts of living we most enjoy?
It's also been an opportunity for me to use my camera more in the everyday. It's been a New Year's resolution of mine - to photograph these memories and moments in a more deliberate way. It's been a good one.
