hey,

i don’t think i’ve told you about all of the feelings i’ve been feeling over the past few months - but it’s been a lot to process. i’m ending this strange era in my life, the one where i thought i’d make it big up here, create an extravagant life in NYC, become this super tech bro, and make everyone jealous at home.

instead, i admit defeat. it’s not that i don’t think i truly lost here or that i was beat by some giant external force, but this isn’t what i had in mind - at least for this stage in my life. it felt more isolating here than ever.

i’ve never actually told you about my job and i don’t know if that’s subliminal by design or not. if you want a quick recap, i worked as a solo IT guy for a healthcare insurance consulting firm, or at least that’s an easy way to describe it. i remember thinking about how amazing this was, since i made a $60k salary, had my own apartment, new friends, and was living in some new city.

however, it fell apart quickly and to be honest, it’s what i expected in the beginning. there’s a multitude of factors at play for the reason why it failed:

• i never really made friends up here. my usual way of doing it was through work, school, or friends of friends…but that didn’t really work up here. work wasn’t a place to make friends as my boss made everything work-only. school was virtual and my friends told me how “i’m too much energy to hang out with” as they were 30-somethings.
• my work was intense, mainly because i did everything and had no support. it’s tough being an entire IT department for two companies(!) and having the energy to do anything else.
• school has been a bit tough, but also mostly backlogged. i need to get back in the groove of it all, but it’s something where if i feel discouraged in all aspects, i don’t really feel like opening up a lecture video.
• i didn’t expect a lot of my family to die. i knew my aunt wasn’t going to make it for much longer, but i also expected her to stay around for the rest of the year. that didn’t happen obviously and having more and more family deaths were kind of hard to deal with from so far away.

TLDR: the stress got to me. my boss noticed it, my family noticed it, my friends noticed it, I noticed it. it wasn’t easy. none of this was easy by any means and I felt as if i was suffocating at every step. there were times where I wished I just had a hug or someone to talk to. there were times I wish I could just drink my mind away and there were times I clung to a pill bottle. as a way to deal with it, i would plan an imaginary trip to berlin. i’d make lists of all the foods i wanted to try, places to go, things to see, and that’s what kept me going. it wasn’t enough though.

quitting my job taught me a lot because it made me understand the true colors of a lot of different things. it made me value myself a bit more, as for quite sometime, i thought I wouldn’t be able to even land an interview based on how my boss spoke about me. i hadn’t really hung out with a real friend for some time and i didn’t realize i’d been missing out on that. i didn’t really focus on my studies and it felt nice to get some classes out of the way.

there were a lot of changes here and there, some i hope you’ll notice it the next time we connect. genuinely, i feel happier. my parents have told me that actually. most of my family have commented about that in some way or another.

it’s just a weird feeling that this is over. i don’t know if i should feel excited to start a new chapter again. this one was not all bad - i also had an insane roommate i’ll never forget, i spent sometime riding subways and romanticizing my life, and just fun at times. i’ll miss S’MAC, magnolia’s, joe’s, and little spots in NYC. i’ll miss chinatown.