On uncertainty.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to grow up. This is probably prompted by me sitting in my apartment all day wondering if the city that I know and love will ever go back to “normal”—people going to work then out on the sidewalk and subway to crowded bars and coffee shops, museums, plays, concerts, pools, baseball games, gyms, parties, dates, apartments, whatever. All the stuff that brought me here in the first place and that I didn’t do nearly enough of when it was all just a few minutes away.

The answer is that while I want the city to go back to normal, I really have no idea whether or when it will. I’m basically just living on the hope of a quote that I’m probably going to mangle but which goes something like “the eulogy of New York City has been written many times before and it’s always been wrong.”

And I think an acknowledgement of that uncertainty and the fact that it’s just the nature of life is, for me at least and for now at least, what it means to grow up. The older I get the more I realize that the people who you really want to have the answers—whether they’re your parents, supervisors at work, therapists, life coaches, I don’t know—are all just also hoping for the best and trying to get by.

So what does any of this have to do with a block association? You probably won’t meet anyone, at least on this block, with all the answers. But what I’ve realized is that when I’m out with people who I genuinely like spending time with and talking to, I forget about all of this stuff. Sorry for bringing it up in the first place. Here’s to forgetting about all of this stuff and widening your circle just a little bit.

See you shortly.