A new year

It’s the first winter I’ve decided to spend entirely in New York City, foregoing travel to a warmer climate. It’s a month into the season and it already feels colder than I remember.¹ I spend most days nestled inside my new apartment, listening to a symphony of wind whistling through the surrounding structures as a flag atop a distant building rages rapidly back and forth like its frenetic conductor. Winter is primarily a season of stillness, the barren trees and frozen ponds a reminder of what lies in wait. The season serves as an inflection point between the coming and going years.

The tail end of 2024 brought about a succession of changes in my life, among the most significant being a move to a new apartment in a new borough with a new roommate and a new job. It was a marked departure from the months prior of living with no lease in the city and no job. During those months, in which I had no strict obligation of where to be and when, I became well acquainted with alone time, isolation being an unexpected consequence of not having an office to go to or regular meetings to attend. I subconsciously gravitated away from people, wanting to avoid questions about how my job search was going or how I was taking advantage of my “free” time. In all the noise of what I felt I should be doing in the months following my layoff, what I sought most desperately was silence.

When friends and strangers alike did ask how I was doing, I usually responded with something along the lines of I am doing quite well. I followed up often with I am still so grateful, attempting to reassure not only them but myself that I was indeed okay even when it felt disingenuous at times. Knowing my circumstances, self-pity felt a dangerous place to linger. I had a steady support system to rely on and knew that things could have been much worse. Being laid off wasn’t all bad. I had been growing dissatisfied with my previous role anyway, and now had an opportunity, albeit forced, to re-evaluate the trajectory of my career and explore technical areas outside my previous scope of work. I grew a deeper appreciation for the field I was in and for its general flexibility and stability — attributes I had sometimes previously taken for granted.

I reminded myself of these sentiments as the days of unemployment turned into months, through the gnawing financial uneasiness of living in an expensive city with no stable source of income and the shame and rejection that came with the trial and error of finding a new job. On days when my apartment became more a place of confinement than one of refuge, I took frequent trips to coffee shops across the boroughs as a means of escape. And, when the blistering humidity of the Northeast became overwhelming, I flew to visit family friends in Vancouver for a brief respite in the glory of a Pacific Northwestern summer.

Though at first I struggled to accept the inevitable difficulties of unemployment, willing myself to move through unpleasant feelings by establishing new structures around study, travel, and play, it, like many things, became easier with time. I began viewing uncertainty as a fact of my life instead of something to resolve, and living day to day instead of fixating on what my life would look like a year, or let alone a few weeks from where I was at the moment. I also learned that part of my discomfort was a result of embarrassment that arose in an incessant urge to over explain my situation to others and the inability to distill my own identity into a succinct work title. I’m unemployed but…and…and…

I had regressed a little bit into the person I was when I was 22 and first moved to the city, when I spent an outsized amount of time trying to figure out who I was and what I should do — what to wear, how often to go out, how to make friends and how much time to spend with them. At 25, I was still figuring out how to rid myself of my own need to justify my decisions to other people, as to not alter the image I had built of myself through their eyes. Self-confidence is always easier when the way you move through the world aligns with the positive expectations of others, whether it comes to beauty or success or otherwise.

Like I did three years prior and what I imagine I will continue to do throughout the entire course of my life, I had to delineate my own desires from those of others, undergoing the messy trial and error of figuring out what feels true to my own values and what doesn't. I needed to examine the shoddy foundations in which I had formed a sense of self, and begin again.

It was a year of searching in more ways than one. It was finding a job, a new apartment, and a new routine. Beneath it, it was finding my own confidence and means of fulfillment and contentment. It was a search, but also a return to home,² a resolution to be there for my own self again and again, whether it be in the city, or in my travels abroad. Ultimately, it was a year of letting go.

We are nearing the end of January and though the newness of the year has not completely worn off, it fades rapidly. These days, I spend much more time by myself than I did previously and when I go to work, it feels a little different than it did before. For the first time since I moved to the city, I don’t feel the same itch to escape.

In the quiet of winter, I listen to the thrum of construction of the new apartment complex across the street from me as it slowly gets put together, floor by floor, window pane by window pane, until there’s only one level remaining. I wonder what it’ll look like in spring.

1. It just so happens temperatures in the city are indeed lower this winter when compared to the last few years.

2. Here’s a little nod to Joan Didion’s essay “On Self-Respect” — an essay that everyone should make the time to read.