I don’t remember exactly when I stared daydreaming about living and working (well, mostly living) in New York City. It feels like I’ve been yearning to call it my home my whole life.

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I do remember the many conversations I had with my best friend about living the dream in what many people believe to be the greatest city in the world. As candidates for a Bachelor of Arts Degree in International Studies at the time, NYC for us was the most sensible place on the planet to launch a career in foreign affairs, it being the host city of the United Nations Headquarters. Everything else - museums, art galleries, book readings, old buildings, abundance of exquisite dining options, cultural diversity and all the other vibrant things the city has to offer - would have been one big bonus package. We thought of ourselves asMonica and Rachel(kids, in case you didn’t know, FRIENDS is my generations How I Met Your Mother). We were ready - as ready as every college kid thinks he or she is - to take on everything: countless heterosexual dramas and seemingly endless existential crisis included. We had each other to fight all the battles with, and NYC is our battlefield.

Screenshot of Season 6, Episode 6: The One on the Last Night. No copyright infringement intended.

It’s been over a decade since these hopeful, often drunken, conversations with my best friend. A lot of things have happened since then. To put it more accurately, life happened. With all the things that have occurred, I find it hard to believe that I am where I am right now - a mere train ride away from the city of my dreams. It may not be a pop-the-champagne-bottle moment, but I HAVE gone through great lengths to get here, and it is enough cause for celebration.

“I may walk slowly, but never backwards.” - Abraham Lincoln

source: http://quotationsbook.com/quote/32691/

Something tells me I have to keep on thriving.

Some few weeks before my birthday last year, I was visited by a familiar feeling: the life-is-slipping-through-my-fingers feeling that I started having since I turned 25. Around the same time, what with all the personal crises I was going through, I fell into some sort of self-diagnosed depression. Feeling sorry for myself for the things I still have not seen, experienced and accomplished that some people my age have, I began second-guessing all the decisions I made in the past that lead me to where I was last year, and, worse, blaming all the people around me that I claimed to have restrained me from seeing, experiencing and accomplishing those things and, ultimately, “living a full life.” I felt like I was on a losing streak and I was on my knees praying for it to stop. Not many people are aware of the personal hell that I went through last year, especially the people that I used to live with. The entire ordeal made me realize my weaknesses, which is very humbling. I knew what I needed to do, but with opportunities scarce in that city in California at the time, I did not know where to start. I was desperately seeking for a break that did not seem to come.  Thankfully, I managed to have built amazing relationships with amazing people over the years. That, I see as a major accomplishment. A long chat with my good friend, Vera, well, did not exactly turn my life around (just yet), but it sure did pick me up. Keeping the law of attraction in mind, she told me to start focusing on the things I want to accomplish in the near future. To do that, she said, I needed to create a vision board.  I realized that I did not exactly know what I really wanted. Sure, there were the obvious dreams made of a peaceful and drama-free personal life, a great career, being able to travel around the world and so on. Or, maybe I did, I just did not know how to achieve them. Vera told me not worry about the “how” and just focus on the “what”. All I have to do is get the “what” out there and the universe, as Paulo Coelho wrote in his best-selling novel, The Alchemist, will conspire to make it happen. So, I started looking for pictures that I can cut out and paste into my vision board. It was fun and it since felt like I am halfway to accomplishing everything I had on my board. I do not know why, though, but I left this vision board in California when I moved to New Jersey. And that is why I am doing this. 

Some few weeks before my birthday last year, I was visited by a familiar feeling: the life-is-slipping-through-my-fingers feeling that I started having since I turned 25. Around the same time, what with all the personal crises I was going through, I fell into some sort of self-diagnosed depression. Feeling sorry for myself for the things I still have not seen, experienced and accomplished that some people my age have, I began second-guessing all the decisions I made in the past that lead me to where I was last year, and, worse, blaming all the people around me that I claimed to have restrained me from seeing, experiencing and accomplishing those things and, ultimately, “living a full life.”

I felt like I was on a losing streak and I was on my knees praying for it to stop. Not many people are aware of the personal hell that I went through last year, especially the people that I used to live with. The entire ordeal made me realize my weaknesses, which is very humbling. I knew what I needed to do, but with opportunities scarce in that city in California at the time, I did not know where to start. I was desperately seeking for a break that did not seem to come. 

Thankfully, I managed to have built amazing relationships with amazing people over the years. That, I see as a major accomplishment. A long chat with my good friend, Vera, well, did not exactly turn my life around (just yet), but it sure did pick me up. Keeping the law of attraction in mind, she told me to start focusing on the things I want to accomplish in the near future. To do that, she said, I needed to create a vision board. 

I realized that I did not exactly know what I really wanted. Sure, there were the obvious dreams made of a peaceful and drama-free personal life, a great career, being able to travel around the world and so on. Or, maybe I did, I just did not know how to achieve them. Vera told me not worry about the “how” and just focus on the “what”. All I have to do is get the “what” out there and the universe, as Paulo Coelho wrote in his best-selling novel, The Alchemist, will conspire to make it happen. So, I started looking for pictures that I can cut out and paste into my vision board. It was fun and it since felt like I am halfway to accomplishing everything I had on my board. I do not know why, though, but I left this vision board in California when I moved to New Jersey.

And that is why I am doing this.