I just moved back to New Haven, CT from New York City. I was there for 6 years--from July 2000-September 2006. While I'm happy with the move, it has been somewhat of an adjustment. Not entirely because of the move...I also left a career in advertising and some really good friends (some really bad ones, too).
So I guess I'm in somewhat of a "time out". Liminal, if you will. Betwixt and between.
(For those of you who weren't Anthro majors, here's a good working definition of "liminal" from Wikipedia:
"The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. "...Sounds about right. )
I do think breaks are a good thing. They give you distance and perspective. And then you get to bring it all back (if
you choose to go back) to your circumstances or use it to create new ones.
Not that there was anything wrong with my old life, per se. It just got tiring. I didn't take advertising seriously at all. It's
what made me good at it (because I rarely lost my cool) and it's what made me wrong for it (because I just didn't care). I would get annoyed in meetings listening to people talk in circles making sure they had "made a contribution" and "added value." Listening to clients jabber on about how they could "push the envelope" and use some "non-traditional" tactics.
I really did try to make it "what i wanted to do when i grow up", but it just didn't work. And I wonder what the difference was between me and those who did want it. What was it that had them be so passionate about something I considered so inconsequential? I think really highly of some of my old colleagues (especially my ex-boss), so it's not that I blame it on some personality defect or intellectual deficiency on their parts, or mine for that matter.
And maybe it is just what it is. Like my Miss Piggy bathing suit when I was a kid. It was black and white and pink. And I loved it. I wanted to wear it all the time. One summer, I was getting ready to take my first swim of the season and I went to get it. I pulled it over my legs and it got stuck. For the next 5 minutes, I struggled trying to pull the straps over my shoulders. Anything to get the darn thing on. But it just didn't fit. Fast forward 20 years, and that's exactly what I was doing with my job. Not to imply that I was somehow "too big" for it. It just didn't fit and forcing it didn't help.
My moment of reckoning came during the summer of 2005. There were 60 people dead in London due to the subway bombings, and we were arguing with clients about conducting research for a print campaign. And no one stopped to pause. No one stopped to talk. Everyone just wanted to push on with their work.
I realized that one day I may have a child who has a softball game or a play...and my clients could ultimately get to decide whether or not I went. And I just couldn't handle that my life was going to be prioritized like that.
If I think about it, I guess I'm not that surprised. I always knew it was temporary at best, but I always thought that I'd have a really cool plan in place when I did decide to go. I never thought I'd need to move back to CT to recover (that might be
overstating it a bit, but that's what it feels like sometimes).
But I guess if nothing else, I learned that I need to believe in something and be proud of it...even just a little bit...if I'm going
to spend so much of my time and energy on it. Seems logical...but it's so easy to get caught up in something that's not good for you just to say that you've got something interesting going on.
I'll always love New York. It's really an amazing place to live. But it's also a little warped--the measures of success seem so frivolous to the rest of the world, but they are a really huge deal in New York. For example, "Wow, you live by yourself?" (This is an impressive feat....it's usually the first thing people want to know after "Where do you live?") Even better is..."I have a one bedroom." That means you have arrived...a studio in a doorman building is actually less impressive than having four walls and a door that separate your bed from your couch.
Life gets both bigger and smaller in New York. You live big. It's a bigger stage; there are a ton of all different kinds of people, the buildings look like they're going to topple over, there are so many museums, theaters, neighborhoods and experiences so close by. But because it gets big, it gets small. You have everything you need within a 10 block radius, so why leave the neighborhood? The immediate things become smaller...smaller spaces, smaller priorities, smaller measures of success (bedrooms and doormen). There is no in-between. And you're always compromising something. And for many, it works.
In New York you get to be a precious, insignificant part of something huge. And there's something really great about that.
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