I have been in New York City for a whole month. Since Kendall and I arrived, spring has sprung, and it is beautiful! Although it’s still pretty chilly, and doesn’t quite feel like Spring as I know it (50 degree weather in April? Really?), it really just enforces the idea that I am on my New-York-City-Adventure!

Before I moved, I was working through The Artist’s Way (more of my thoughts on this book can be found here). One of the tasks was to write a letter to yourself, and mail it. I finally received that letter today (Thanks, Elizabeth, for holding onto it for me!), and it was so perfectly timed. It was exactly the encouragement I needed. I had written the letter in December, knowing that I would open it after I moved, and although I knew it would be an encouraging letter, I had forgotten the exact contents. So it was nice to get a little reminder from Past-Emily that I’m here, in New York City, pursuing a life-long dream, and it WILL work out.

This month has definitely had its ups and downs. When we first arrived, we were full of excitement and hope. We didn’t yet know what living here would be like. After a while, we started to get discouraged, because things were not happening according to the timeline we had set for ourselves. But that really just goes to show how little control over our own lives we have, because here we are, a month later, and we have an apartment! It’s a 1-bed/1-bath, and is definitely smaller than our apartment in Dallas, but we expected that. It’s a place we can call “home,” and it suits us just fine. The guy we’re subletting from let us keep his couch and rug, so we even have some furniture! Wahoo! We’ll be here until the end of May, which relieves so much stress from our daily lives.

It’s funny, because we don’t necessarily have a routine. We each follow our professional pursuits every day, but it varies from one day to the next what those pursuits are, and what time of day we begin them. Sometimes, we’ll go to a coffee shop and work for a while, and sometimes we’ll stay in. Some days we get up early, and some days we sleep in. We are definitely making adjustments to life here, and will continue to do so as the weeks pass. We also try to work in a little bit of sight-seeing, without being too tourist-y.

 

 

Kendall is still hopeful that he’ll hear back regarding the job he interviewed for when we first arrived, and is continuing to actively network and pursue freelance projects as they present themselves. I am continuing to take advantage of the connections I’ve made, and using every opportunity I can to work with professional, working actors. The Staged Reading of Man & Wife was extremely well-received, and the full script is due to be read in June! I have also had the opportunity to do some small voice over work through The Looping Division; it was really interesting to simply observe the other actors, but I even got to jump in on a couple of cues!

When things aren’t going the way you want them to, it can be really easy to wallow in everything that seems to be going wrong, and forget about the things that are actually going right. This past month has been a real test of my ability to hold it together and remember that I’m here for a reason. New York City is big. And scary. And if you let it, it will chew you up and spit you out. But it’s also soul-nurturing. Peaceful, even. And if you let it, it will build you up and make you stand tall.