Well, world, I finally did it. I packed up all of my things, poured every last dollar into my savings that I could, hugged my parents tightly, and moved overseas. 

Or over the Hudson River that is. 

Yep, that’s right. I moved to New York City. The greatest city in the world! I write to you from Brooklyn, the land where strollers are the hippest form of transportation and where every single man who walks past me looks a little like Jack Antonoff. 

Isn’t it funny — I spend all of my life touting my Jersey pride, claiming that New Jersey bagels are better than those in any of these five boroughs, and yet…somehow I decide to live here, 14 miles from where I grew up? Like, don’t people choose to move across the country or something, travel the world and experience new cultures? And here I am, shoving the same (slightly better) greasy piece of pizza down my throat and yelling at bad drivers when they almost hit me. 

And it’s because when you grow up next to New York City, you’re taught as a kid that going into the city is the best weekend getaway with your high school friends. Your parents suggest taking a day trip to the big apple and suddenly you can close your eyes and picture every single corner of that giant Toys R Us (that’s now making a return to Herald Square!) Empire State of Mind blasts at every single high school dance. It’s New York! Who wouldn’t want to live here — what’s not to love?!

Well, I’m learning very quickly what’s not to love. 

Like staring at the family of rats in the trash complex every night as I wash dishes. Like the fact that I brought a book to enjoy on my 45-minute commute to work on the subway, only to be scrunched in like a can of sardines and breathing down some poor woman’s neck. Or maybe it’s also that our toilet is in a teeny tiny little corner of our bathroom, and I can’t properly manspread when I wanna get my business done. 

But these problems? Oh, I’m lucky to have these problems. We could also talk about the affordability crisis, the fact that the unemployment rate for Black New Yorkers is 12 (TWELVE) percent, that 75,000 people are sleeping in the shelter systems each night…

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of!

All jokes aside, as I start to settle into paradise on earth, I want to acknowledge how fucking cool it is that I get to do this as a young person in my twenties. I imagine looking back on this time in my life and telling my kids, “yeah, I was fucking broke. But I was fucking alive.” Because that’s the thing. Did I spend almost all of my paycheck this past weekend at Governor’s Ball? Yeah. But did Lil Nas X possibly look into the crowd and see me? YEAH! That’s living baby. 

This is all to say, this move to New York will be a new chapter for me, one that I’m imposing on all of you readers. Welcome to my little rant that I’m calling a blog. For too long, I’ve flooded my friends’ messages with my incoherent voice memos. Now, they will be on a WordPress Personal account, published for the entire world to see. Or at least for anyone who visits flyonthewall.blog.

So thanks, reader, for visiting! I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve, and I’m super excited to get this party started.