i'm trying to be a better person (and other adventures)

i'm trying to be a better person.

i set a new year's goal of fundamentally changing the rhythm of my life because i don't like how i've been living. i love my job, but i am so much more than my labor. i love my boyfriend, but i am so much more than one person's loved one. i love watching television, but i am so much more than just a passive viewer.

i've been feeling lately that my life is just living itself and i'm going along for the ride - much like a passive viewer. i don't feel like an active participant or have a say in what happens to me. part of that is true - i can't control my life, and when i try to, that's when things tend to get even more complicated and stressful.  but a part of me has also gotten impatient at waiting for the next great adventure.  i am craving excitement and change.  i am getting restless.

this past weekend, i decided to go home and visit my mom, who lives just outside of new york city, in jersey city.  every time i go back to jersey city, i feel like it's changed so much since the last time i was there.  maybe that's true, but i think it's more accurate to say that i've changed so much.  to me, jersey city is the place from which i could not wait to move, and every time i return, i'm reminded of a childhood that was stifling and undesirable.  don't get me wrong, i have nothing against the place; it's just that jersey city reminds me of everything i need to rise above, everything i needed to be better than.  there was some part of me, since i was in high school, that was not going to be satisfied until i left jersey city and, proverbially, made something of myself.

the main reason i was in northern nj this past weekend was because i had a meeting for work in new york city.  now, new york city is a totally different story.  back in the days when i lived in jersey city, crossing the river into new york was my solace, my salvation.  someone recently wrote a love letter to their home state of west virginia, and it was recently circulated among my facebook friends.  these lines resonated with me:

"I never stopped being a West Virginian. There are some things that can’t be undone. Not by all the gods in all the heavens. Geography be damned. ...I like to think that when I come home, you’re as happy to see me as I am you. And that the few days we get to spend together each year are like a gift, a time machine. Proof that old friends never fade."

substitute "new yorker" for "west virginian," and that sentence would reflect everything i feel about new york.  here's the thing: even though i feel like jersey city is different every time i come visit, i don't think the same thing about new york city.  sure, there are new skyscrapers, and you can now sit at a cafe in the middle of times square, and some of the crap they're showing on Broadway stages nowadays make andrew lloyd webber and stephen sondheim ashamed of ever being associated with the great white way (spiderman the musical? really?), but new york city is still the same.

there is really no coherent theme for this post, except maybe that i so badly want to move to new york city and maybe that's the new adventure i'm yearning for.  i will always, always <3 new york.  she is my first love, and first loves stick to you forever.