It’s been about two weeks since my trip began and I have to say i am failing quite heavily at one particular romanticized notion that I had, which is to say I have accomplished very little work at all.

That’s mostly because I was in New York couchsurfing and sightseeing. I walked about 10 miles each day, bouncing between the Met, around Brooklyn, Central Park, and Times Square, impromptu pub crawls, and weird jazz clubs. I bought chicken in a waffle cone and watched Wes Anderson movies in the back of a bar. This was a glimpse of city living, and I am in love. All I need to do is find a closet in San Francisco or San Jose that I can rent for less than the price of kidney. Also maybe a job.

But more surprising than the experience of actively sightseeing was the experience of engaging with new and unexpected people. In addition to the usual suspects whom I had already bothered about visiting, I really, really enjoyed talking to and spending time with Brooklyn and Valhalla, two women I’ve known only through the muted colors of others descriptions. And maybe the future only holds that sort of limited engagement, as there isn’t really a space back home where we’d interact. But after this weekend, it’s really quite clear to see why my friends have high opinions - they were iridescent. So you know. Fingers crossed.

Part of what I wanted to accomplish was proper loneliness. Maybe a not totally healthy way of detoxing, nor do I really like the idea of comparing my friends to toxins, but the aim was to use the “alone” to spur my action into something engaging. And in two weeks, I have utterly failed to accomplish that, at least to the ability that I’d like.

Basically I can’t be trusted to follow through with my own sabbaticals. But I’m okay with that, because the trade off was falling in love, if only for couple days.