Here goes nothing...

The idea of a blog has forever been a foreign concept to me, but I thought that this opportunity was as good as ever to give it a try. For nineteen years I've lived in the comfort of my home, with both of my parents and my younger brother. I've never went away to sleep away camp, (minus my first attempt at this city when I was eight years old and lived with my grandparents for a month), didn't do anything too daring in high school, and spent most summer frequently visiting the beach and my favorite ice cream shop, in my small New England town. I'm sure there are tons of other people that also leave home and don't feel compelled to write about it, but I think this will make it easier for me at least. After going to school five minutes down the road for college, I began to strongly question my ability to live on my own. I love my parents to death, but I started to feel like I was never going to know if I could do it, unless I tried. So fast forward to Mid-April and I'm taking a job as a hostess at a restaurant in New York City for the entire summer. I guess you could say it was a little bit of an impulse decision, and the fact that I needed money and hadn't found a summer job yet, nor did I want to spend another summer working my job in retail. But recently in life I've learned to live more impulsively, and here we are. I guess one of the biggest reasons I'm excited about this summer is because it's one of my first opportunities to live without a limit? In college everything is lined up for you, you walk five feet to get to everything you could possibly need. And although I am living with my grandma, the rest is essentially up to me. I have this notion of walking down 5th avenue alone, all by myself, surrounded by 6 million strangers, and finding myself extremely happy. I'm excited to be in a city like New York where I think (and I'm hoping) that independence is not only embraced, but encouraged. After my first year, I've come to the realization that college has a funny way making you want to be more dependent on the people around you, while being less dependent on your parents. From meals, to the gym, to studying and even sleeping, college has definitely made me feel like if I'm doing anything alone, it's strange, and even abnormal. So...here we are...I'm hoping to embrace my independence this summer, to bask in the glory of being alone, and most importantly, to learn to love solitude. I've compiled a list of things I'd like to do in New York this summer, probably many average things. A lot of the list is full of art museums. Art is one thing in life that I've never had an appreciate for, and despite coming to New York a million times, I've never once stepped foot in an art museum here. So I think that will be a project, an adventure for me. I want to learn about art, embrace it, appreciate it. I want to walk around the Met and the MOMA alone and fully appreciate what surrounds me. I know this probably seems ridiculous but everyone has to start somewhere right? So the list follows, i'm adding to it more every day, and hopefully I'll get to experience a lot. Most importantly this summer is a time for me. It's a time to move on from my freshman year, all the baggage I've claimed from the time I spent at college, and to find a fresh start in a new city, where my life is an open book. And when I return to college in the fall, I'm sure I'll find my skeletons that I'm trying to lock away in the closet, but I hope that this summer will help me be more capable of dealing with whatever comes my way. So...that's that. I'm not sure how often you're supposed to blog? But I guess I'll just see what happens. Here's to a fabulous summer, away from vacationland, in the city that never sleeps. Hello New York, hopefully I'm ready for you.