touch and go
summer in the city, making up for lost time
I’m leaving to europe again next weekend, which feels surreal to say given my last post was a reflection about being in europe. Summer in the city is always a strange fever dream — it feels like I spend the whole year waiting for summer and then all of a sudden it’s july, and simmering, and the days fly by. I’ve lost track of everyone’s summer schedule: lindsay’s in peru, christine’s in berlin. Everyone is both suddenly here and suddenly going away. Time is measured in before I gos and when I’m backs.
I’ve been feeling more anxious about the passing of time. Both the idea of getting older and everything changing and getting older and nothing changing. In corporate america, we measure time in “Objectives” and “Key Results”. I’m starting to apply the framework to my personal life — outside of work, what have I done of note in the past 6 months. Anything? Nothing?
I feel like I have this existential crisis every few months. Like time is passing me and I have nothing to show for it. We measure time ubiquitously on the x axis— and the y value is up to us. Is this a good use of my time, and are we moving towards our goals? My mother always says that time is to be grasped tightly — I feel like time always, always slips through my fingers in the summer.
In a frenzied state I sign up for 6 races before I go to bed. I want to prove that 2023 was not a waste. I want to pull up my report call and see capital M metrics followed by capital R results.
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I feel like things don’t excite me anymore, Fiona says to me in the blistering london heat.
I can’t tell if it’s because I’m older and things aren’t that novel or if I just am not able to be excited by things anymore
We’re eating pret sandwiches on the park benches next to each other in soho, staring out at the locals and tourists flitting around. We run through our travel schedules, working abroad, what it’s like moving halfway across the world.
The first time I picked up my life and moved to sydney it seemed like both the most exciting thing in the world and also not that big of a deal. I was 24 and moving to australia was one of my life goals — the world felt infinite and at my fingertips. But now at 28, the world feels smaller and much more serious. If I moved to paris would that be detrimental to my career? Do I know enough people in london to justify living there?
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea that things aren’t as exciting anymore. I’ve stopped going out as much this year. I thought it was just me until I started talking to my friends about it, and it seems like everyone is going through it. Drew said it best when we had coffee at lyria one day: none of these nights are new anymore. I wrote it down in the notes app so I wouldn’t forget. When every night comes with a half day opportunity cost, another dancy bar opening in the LES with a disco ball just doesn’t do it anymore.
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I’m going to europe and I have nothing planned. I used to be the type to have entire excel spreadsheets of recommendations collected months in advance, with a schedule booked morning, afternoon and night. In those days, I had exactly 10 days of orbit-mail less bliss a year and I wanted to make every second count.
Now a trip to europe is exciting but not in the same way it was exciting when I was 22. Have I become too spoiled? Too jaded? Am I just old now and nothing is exciting to me?
I’m planning for my parents to come to the city at the end of the summer — it’s my favorite type of trip to plan where you’ve been to a place more than once so you don’t need to check off the top attractions but it’s still novel enough to not feel mundane. I’m looking up hotels in the city and realize that if I moved away from new york, I’d have to pay $300/night just to cosplay my everyday life now.
Paris is one of those spots that falls into the golden zone of familiarity. I dream about paris the way that I used to dream about new york. Waking up in the early morning, picking up an americano and a ham & cheese croissant, and going for a walk in the marais. Which is to say, doing the paris equivalent of the shit I do in new york every day. But for some reason, doing that in paris is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard but doing that in new york is just another sunday in july. I imagine somewhere out there, someone in Paris is living this life and romanticizing life in new york city. I guess we always want what we can’t have.
Except I don’t think that’s true. I do want what I have now. I love my little new york life where I get to go on long walks on the west side if the weather is nice and call up a friend for a coffee. It’s just that on a day-to-day we’re blinded by the routine of it all that we forget there is so much to be romanticized.
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Today is the fourth of july, and rhys and I walk into a little cafe tucked away beneath the west village. It’s my first time being in the city for the 4th, and honestly, it’s kind of nice. I get 8 hours of sleep and time to catch up on writing. I finally cleaned my apartment to a state that feels acceptable to have guests over spontaneously.
I explain to him my existential angst of not doing enough with my time. I’ve been a flakey friend recently because I’ve piled my to-do list aspirationally high and then get mad at myself for not doing enough, and have to decline plans as punishment.
You can’t make up for lost time, Rhys counters, it’s a sunk cost.
I’ve always thought that sunk costs were stupid. You’ve made the investment, so you need to get the return. You have to make it worth something.
The barista interrupts our debate to announce that he’s closing in 30 minutes.
I start writing, trying to eke out a full blog post but everything sounds contrived and terrible, and 24 minutes later the barista looks to me and says I have 6 minutes left. Every second counts, he winks, and I’m suddenly convinced he can read my mind.
The three of us strike up a conversation. He explains how he doesn’t drink coffee — can’t even stand the smell anymore. It reminds him too much of something that’s too absurd to repeat here but it makes us all laugh. I tell him it’s my third coffee of the day, I’m hopeless. He suggests we try mate tea next time, we talk about the tea shop down the road. And then just like that it’s 5pm and it’s closing time and I’m shutting my laptop without anything written.
Maybe that’s the beauty of it, you can do all the planning and all the work towards your goals but the things you remember are the little bits and bobs outside your control. There’s value in serendipity I wrote in a memo for work earlier this month after getting back from Europe, intangible value from being in the right place at the right time. Maybe I’m measuring the time for the wrong Results. Isn’t time relative in the end? Maybe the summers will always go by quickly and it’s okay for today to just be a Good day because it’s a good day.
