I’m now five months into my job and my life here in New York City and long overdue for an update. I’ll save reflections on the former for next month (in theory), because six months seems a fitting time point for reviewing and evaluating my professional progress—and because it’s a Summer Friday as I type this and I don’t want to talk so much about work.
I want to talk about all the fun I’ve been having on weekends and work nights lately.
Over the month of May, my sister, then my parents, then two of my best friends from home all came to visit. It was a wonderful, wonderful, exhausting, wonderful month. I slept for 36 hours straight last weekend when it all came to a close. Hosting people in a city that’s relatively new for you is fun because it gives you a reason to figure out how to have a happy day in this place. I might not like it here normally, but I’ll be damned if my guest has a bad time, so I will plan out a showstopper weekend, and what do you know, this place can be pretty fun! Hosting also gives you a license to play pretend that your life is always like this, that you have brunch every Saturday morning and eat at amazing restaurants every Friday night. Planning nightlife is trickier, because you want to present to your out-of-town guests an illusion of happenstance, of serendipity and chance encounters, but you can’t risk a dud of a night, so a great deal of planning and backup planning and if-all-fails planning is actually involved. The nights out with my sister and my friends were so much fun. We went to a minigolf club, we went to various nightclubs for dancing, we met strangers, we had fun. We had plenty of drinks and we did not pay for them all. And our days were packed with exploration and activities, we saw and did so much: Chelsea Market and the High Line, the Met, Governor’s Island, the West Village, Central Park, the top of the Empire State Building, my office; bookstores, and musicals, and restaurants, and art. And best of all it was just so much fun to have these people I’ve been missing with me in this place I’ve been sometimes struggling to enjoy. May was a lovely, full month. Even between the visits, it was exciting: I saw a play with work friends (FAT HAM), I went to Bloomsbury’s 25th Anniversary Party (on Lauren’s in), off of networking there I had my first editor drinks just last week, and in the middle of May I had perhaps my favorite New York publishing world experience to date, at the author event for the release of Nash Jenkins’ gorgeous debut novel, FOSTER DADE EXPLORES THE COSMOS.
Let me back up momentarily to say that this was the third author even I’d been to so far in New York. The first one was a Lucy Foley event hosted by a college in Brooklyn, and there I got to meet her not as a random reader in the crowd but as the new assistant to her US agent, and that was so cool! She was completely lovely, and I got to tell her about how I’d talked about THE GUEST LIST in my interview for Alexandra’s desk, and how full circle it was to get to meet her now, and I’d brought my copy of THE GUEST LIST, which she signed with a personalized note thanking me for “all [my] help.” I felt very much like a professional in the industry as opposed to being just a fan, and that was very cool.
The second author event I attended was also for an Alexandra client. It was the launch event for Jessa Maxwell’s THE GOLDEN SPOON, which was one of the first two galleys I took home and read from Alexandra’s desk during my first couple of weeks on the job, and I’d really enjoyed it then (it’s cozy mystery meet GBBO, what’s not to love), so it again felt full circle to be present at the launch. The event had a great turnout, but one guest was particularly exciting: Dan Mallory (AJ Finn) was there, with his little dog, Ike. And so I got to meet him (and his dog) and gush to Dan about how much I’d loved WOMAN IN THE WINDOW. And also, what a fascinating person to get to meet. At this, I felt like I’d gotten a peak past the door into the insider social sphere of the industry, and that was cool.
But this FOSTER DADE launch event was the coolest, by far, and here’s why. I’d written a glowing Goodreads review of the book a couple of weeks prior, after reading an advance copy of the book that I’d borrowed from the office (CAA/legacy ICM agents represent him), and it was basically my love letter to the book (which I was and am obsessed with). Now flash forward to this event mid-May, I go up to the table to have Nash sign my new copy after the Q&A and reading, and as soon as I say “Hi, I’m Katherine” he goes “WAIT—are you Goodreads Katherine?” Nash Jenkins had read my Goodreads review, and he’d loved it, and he’d remembered and recognized me from it. My bookish life was made. Later that night I posted the book onto my Instagram story, and he replied, reposted it, and followed me back. Today he liked my review on Goodreads, and our Goodreads friendship is pending. Come what may, this is the highlight thus far of my reading career. And it will always be one of my favorite stories in general.
So life here has been fun lately.
And it’s not to say that I didn’t have any fun prior to May 1st. I had plenty of glowing moments in January through April. Plenty of them. But May was the first month where it was all so constant, and it was the first month that I was so continuously socially busy that I am now looking forward to a weekend with 0 plans. It’s night and day compared to January.
But to give a glimpse of some of the fun in those first four months, highlights have been these: discovering Buvette with Lauren (and I’ve now since taken everyone who comes to visit me here); seeing CURSED CHILD on Broadway and being visited by friends; laying out in the park, chatting on benches in the park, running after work on cool evenings in the park, walking through the park on scenic detours home; going for drinks with fellow assistants whom by now I can certainly call friends; patio dinners with Harper where we talk until the restaurant's closed and we don't even notice.
In March on a Friday night in, reading at home, I wrote the following: “This city is literally a playground… which means there are infinite ways to have fun, and you’ll never run out of things to do, and it’s so fun to be here with friends… and when you don’t have friends to play with here it’s so quick and easy to feel angsty or sad. And lonely, swinging on a swing alone...
“It’s truly wild last week I went out for drinks after work with a few of the other assistants, we went to a wine bar and then were running around Midtown, laughing and j-walking drunk across Park Avenue. Blasted at Popeye’s at one in the morning. At the wine bar, we went through like 6 bottles of wine and kept making up inside jokes and took ‘mirror’ selfies in the reflection of this baking pan (that ‘we found’ according to John but really ‘we’ brought it, Abby had baked a cake for Jess’s birthday and had brought it on the pan to work that day). And then the next day all morning we kept texting inside jokes in our group chat. It was all so warm. And it’s just crazy how some nights are like that and others are not at all. I mean don’t get me wrong I love reading on the couch. But I love it best when it’s a relaxing foil to adventures. I feel like I’m wasting my youth and squandering life in the city when I only stay at home and read.”
And now here I am, so busy throughout May that I am happy to stay home at night and read. And I still miss everyone, but it’s not all I do anymore. And I still don’t know if I love this city subjectively, but May taught me the ways I can appreciate it objectively, and that’s something.
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I do want to acknowledge the significance of this particular calendar point. A year ago today (it’s June 9th, barely still, as I began to type), on June 9th, 2022, I was celebrating the conclusion of my time in Portland. On June 11, 2022, I graduated with my master's, and my eastbound flight scheduled for later that night was delayed until the following morning (and then further delayed, etc.), so it was in the wee hours of June 13, 2022, that I finally arrived in New York last summer to attend the Columbia Publishing Course. I can’t at all believe we’re coming up on a year since then; these past twelve months have gone by in a flash, a quicker flash than I think, to my mind, any other of my 24 years have passed for me. It feels like only yesterday I was moving into my apartment here in Manhattan, and two days ago that I was moving out of Portland.
It does not feel like nearly a year has gone by since I was sitting in Pulitzer Hall with a blue-stringed badge around my neck, listening to presentations by speakers who ultimately influenced the shape of my career goals and path. It does not feel like nearly a year has gone by since I flew back to Portland after the program ended, had those last few bonus days in the PNW, and then drove south—for two hours, until my beloved car said enough was enough and we had to leave her behind in a scrapyard outside of Eugene, with the help of some dedicatedly loving friends who swooped in—some remotely, some literally—to absolutely save the day. It does not feel likely nearly a full year has passed since I returned home to Moorpark, repainted the room I grew up in, spent so many sunny days by the pool reading books with my mom and driving around SoCal in the carpool lane with my dad and having a daily life that was populated with familiarity and frequent contact with west-coast friends and a fridge that was always stocked. I left all of that behind in January, and it feels like the time since then has flown even faster, and yet it also feels like years were packed into these last five months given how much change has happened since. Time is strange. And sense of place too. Six months ago I was home, missing Portland, and now I’m here, missing home (and Portland still, too).
The strangest thought is this: I am here, and this is my life, and it will be for as long as I say so (generally speaking). The passage of time sometimes scares me and always mystifies me and life just is a funny and overwhelmingly existential thing. I still miss people from chapters passed, deeply. I still catch myself feeling some version of what I felt in the midst of it all when the college life I loved was ripped away three months before graduation: Life in this period feels funny and unstable, but I just have to survive this, and I might as well make the most of it while I’m in it, but this too shall pass and everything will return, you’ll come out on the other side and be reunited with the joys that you miss. But that’s not true now, and it wasn’t true then… on the other side of 2020 my life would never go “back” to normal, despite what everyone was saying; I would never again be an English major at Cal Poly living between the condo I lived in with my best friends and the house where the guys of our close-knit-since-freshman-year friend group resided, I would never again be spending hours at the library and weekends at Avila beach, writing papers at Nautical Bean and poems at Kreuzberg. I went through true grief at the loss of all that, and now there are new things I’m grieving the loss of, but the strange difference here is that there is no global crisis or curriculum requirements or any other external force telling me I can’t go back and have them; it’s just me saying so, it’s totally my choice that I’m here. If I so decided, I could quit it all, quit my job, not renew my lease, move back home and write out of my childhood bedroom or go back to Portland and work at the restaurant again. It’s a weird sense of control to hold, that I could totally cartwheel my life “off course” (whatever that even means, really) if I wanted. I hold that power. There aren’t even time bounds now, no finish line at which point I’ll have to/get to decide what to do or where to go next. No expiration date is printed on my time in New York. I’ll just smell it one day and know it has turned sour.
I feel a palpably frustrating sense of dissonance of desire, because I am 24 and I don’t want to be settled, I want to have all these adventures still and try on all these lives like playing dress up out of a costume chest. I want to put on the shoes of all these versions of myself and live every possible experience and existence I can live. But I also am weary, and I am lonely and sad, and my heart feels broken for the people I miss being one with, and I’m often feeling too tired to do it all again.
So far, the best moments are joyful moments where life here feels vast and wonderful, but in those moments I don’t always feel like myself. I feel like I’m playing a character, and I’m good at playing her, and she’s fun to play, but I’m not convinced she always feels like me.
But I did feel like Me, writing that Goodreads review and having that surreal experience connecting with Nash Jenkins. And I do feel like Me whenever I go to Central Park in my Rainbows to lay out on a picnic blanket and read (or write, or people watch, or nap, or talk to friends). And I did feel like Me the other night when at 9 pm I left the bar and said goodbye to the others and I whipped out my phone to call my dad as he drove home from San Diego, and I walked down from Quality Meats to the Los Tacos No. 1 by Grand Central Station, and then I walked up Park Avenue from 42nd Street all the way to 86th, and I sat on the stoop of a tucked away church near the subway station, and all the while on the phone with my dad, until he finally got home and I said hi to Mom and I got on my train and rode it the few stops home. By now it was well after 11. And I never once felt unsafe, or out of place. So there are these glimpses of the City being mine, mine to walk about as my dad and I chew the fat over the phone; mine to run around at 2 am on Saturday (or Thursday) nights with friends; mine to live in, to play in, to grow in, to scream in. I’ve already long felt ownership over this city every time I see a tourist schlepping an M&Ms Store bag. I internally roll my eyes whenever I see one, and I sit up straighter, hold my head higher, and I make a point to not make a point to try to avoid shoving them with my shoulder on my way past them off the subway. New Yorkers are rude, and they’re always rushing to get where they’re going, and I’ll give these tourists their money’s worth for the full experience that they came for.
And is that a character I’m playing, when I act that way, or is that me? Maybe it’s really not that deep.
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