Last week I was up for 37 straight hours and in that time worked two barista shifts on two separate days. I was going to philosophize about that and the nature of time and art and dedication to things, but it’s hard to concentrate on that when I just discovered I am the only woman in my new building and I could not be happier. We call the new place the Brohort because our graduate school class is called a “cohort” and we are all bros.
Moving has been a bit of an ordeal. Finding a place affordable for four people that’s large enough for five eventually was difficult enough, but add in the fact that we’re all producing web series at the same time, helping out on each others’, writing full-length noir pilots, working part and full time jobs, and just generally being alive, and you’ve got yourself a stressful couple weeks. We found out we got the apartment we liked the best last Monday, signed the lease on Tuesday, set up the utilities on Thursday, and moved 65% of us in on Friday.
Even though I’ve been living in Brooklyn for almost a year, I consider this new apartment, in the trendy neighborhood of Crown Heights, to be my first “real” apartment in New York. This is the first place I’ve picked despite having other options, it’s the first place I’ve picked after having physically seen the space and wandered around, it’s the first lease I’ve signed, and the first place I moved into with more than two suitcases and a backpack.
We won’t have gas until Tuesday, meaning we can’t cook and we don’t have hot water.
The only things in our fridge right now are beer and pizza.
The apartment below us is composed of three other 20-something guys, and the ground level is a hardware store of all men.
In the past six hours, all of the guys I’m living with have at one point sat with me on my bed to write, edit their web series, surf the net, or just hang out. At the exact moment of writing this blog, Jim has taken the bed beside me to edit his noir pilot while Chris and Andrew sit in fold-up chairs around the bed, writing theirs, as we all wait for Game of Thrones to become available on HBO Go. Jim lit his new candle, with an aromatherapy “happiness” scent, but it isn’t necessary, because all is right with my world.
Sure, my job isn’t the happiest of places right now, and sure, I haven’t officially found a person to take over the room in my old apartment, and yeah, I haven’t emailed people about an internship I need to graduate or made an optometry appointment because my prescription is three years old or made up a budget or bought groceries. But last night Jim and I went on a quest for Chinese food in our neighborhood that accepts debit cards and then watched Kill Bill until 1:30am. And this afternoon Andrew and I took a writing and video editing break to get milkshakes at our new favorite diner. And this evening Chris is sitting in my camping chair quietly singing bits of “Zombie” by The Cranberries to himself and looking sheepish when I catch him at it.
I am an adult. I rented a Uhaul van and drove it around the unmarked, chaotic streets of Brooklyn by myself. I talked myself out of dinosaur-patterned window shades. I got excited about how vast of a grocery store exists right around the corner, dancing down the isles with untethered glee.
But I also only have beer and pizza in my fridge, have a Phantom Menace-era Anakin Skywalker action figure on my bookshelf, and am writing/starring in a web series of my own creation about zombies.
Life? It’s a bitch, and I am content.
Valar Morghulis.
