In the summer of 2026, I spent 30 days in New York City. This blog post details why I took the trip and shares a vignette from the first day in the city.
I Saw the TV Glow
Over the first half of 2026, a disturbing thought started creeping into the back of my mind: I felt like I was waiting to die. Is that all there is to life? You live, you meander around, and then you die. It’s quite sad when you have nothing to look forward to and there’s nothing that makes you excited to jump out of bed. Being asleep feels like you’re dead, and being asleep feels quite cozy. Sometimes it felt like being buried alive.
This all reminded me of an indie film I saw back in 2024 called I Saw the TV Glow. Without spoiling too much, by the end of the movie you see the main character slowly suffer and deteriorate into a shell of his former self because he refuses to make an important life decision.
Being rational about it, my reaction was that waiting to die was…really stupid. Why do I feel this way? How do I change it? I’m sufficiently intelligent, and I’m blessed with the freedom to do whatever I want in life. There’s literally nothing physically stopping me from being happy.
After some introspection and feedback, the leading culprit was my geography. DC is beautiful. DC is clean. My family is local. But is staying the right choice for me?
I can’t relate to most people in Washington, DC. Don’t get me wrong, there are many people here whom I absolutely adore, but they feel more like exceptions than the rule. I value people with high degrees of metacognition, agency, and intellectual curiosity—genuine people who seek to make the most out of their lives. You can find people like that in DC, but the density is low. It gets demoralizing after a while.
It was hard to do fun stuff on a whim. DC is relatively walkable, but it’s still not enough. I compare it to a large suburb. The path of least resistance is to stay at home.
The entropy is too low. During Covid, I moved back to the DMV to be closer to family. Family is important to me. But over time, I considered how it could be a cognitive blind spot. Is being local actually that important? How local is close enough? I could project out the rest of my life if I stayed in the area. I did not like the fact that it was easy to project.
I had tried living in New York City back in 2024, but I ended the trip early after being deterred by the hygiene of the city. I was looking for a nice, peaceful place back then. Over the next two years, my needs evolved. I wanted a bit more excitement, adventure, and energy.
So I figured “fuck it, let’s do an experiment.” And I booked my trip to NYC.
Arriving in the city
On the afternoon of May 28, 2026, I stepped out of Penn Station in Manhattan and hauled my suitcase down 9th Avenue. It was relatively humid that day, so beads of sweat quickly started to form on my head as I made my way into Chelsea. As I was walking, my Airbnb host sent me a welcome text and asked to do a quick FaceTime call. I was already a bit wary of the guy, since he tried to finesse me out of $200 for “cleaning fees” immediately after I booked the place, but I stopped at a quiet spot to take his call. I happened to be in front of an elementary school, so random parents walking their kids would shoot me dirty looks as I stood there awkwardly gripping a suitcase in one hand and an iPhone in the other.
A few blocks later, I arrived at the building where I was supposed to stay. It was a brownstone on a quiet street in Chelsea. I was dying to get some air conditioning, so I wasted no time punching in the door code and getting a roof over my head. Past the front door, I was greeted by a short hallway. And at the end of it was a set of stairs.
Lugging a suitcase up five flights of stairs was worse than the entire walk from Penn Station. The hall was narrow and the stairs formed a spiral, so it was hard not to bump the suitcase into the wall after every other step. After climbing a flight of stairs, you realize how little work you actually accomplished.
Eventually, I made it to my Airbnb. It was a charming studio that I definitely overpaid for. The place was a shithole by Arlington standards, but by NYC standards it was an opulent palace. Despite being objectively small, it felt quite spacious. I suspect it was a mix of the high ceilings and efficient interior design. The place smelled like curry, and the air conditioning kept buzzing. But I didn’t care. I needed to process my thoughts.
As I sat at the desk and stared into my laptop to “process my thoughts,” I began feeling antsy. I’m just looking at a screen and burning rent money. Think Andrew, think. What should I be doing? Simple: reach out to friends and stock the apartment. I gotta get groceries. I gotta cook and eat. (Spoiler alert: Andrew ate out every day in NYC.)
I trekked my way down to the corner bodega. It was literally next door. Amazing. The walk outside was shorter than the walk downstairs. The entire store consisted of two dusty aisles crammed together, and in the corner lay a tiny cat curled up on the floor licking its paw. I passed my overpriced ramen and toilet paper to the cashier and pressed “no tip” after tapping my card. They’re price-gouging me and expecting a tip? Maybe we need a communist grocery store after all. (Or I should have gone to Target.)
By then, only two hours had passed since I had stepped out of Penn Station, and the sun was still bright outside. It was also too early for dinner. So I figured the best thing to do at this point was to walk outside aimlessly.
Normally Andrew is a man on a mission, but today Andrew was a moth drawn to the flame. I didn’t have a destination in mind, so I just walked wherever felt natural. Sometimes that meant following the traffic, and sometimes it meant avoiding the crowds. Four avenues later, I found myself by Madison Square Park. Staring down 23rd Street, you could see the sun begin to set. Look at all these normies taking sunset photos, I thought, as I snapped a photo of the sunset.
Madison Square Park felt like a large adult playground: the interior resembled a well-shaded nature preserve, but you could see the city buildings looming beyond the edges of the park. Energy pervaded the park grounds. People packed the walkways as they paced across the park, yet there were just as many people sitting on the benches and just chilling there. A Shake Shack kiosk stood at the edge of the park and reminded me that I was getting hungry.
I ordered a burger and looked for a place to sit. The tables were all occupied. I wandered over to a secluded park bench and began munching on my burger. This is what being a hobo must feel like, I thought. And there were a lot of attractive, well-dressed hobos eating and sitting on park benches that day. As I scarfed down the remainder of my burger, a gust of wind blew my receipt into the nearby bushes. I considered leaving it for a split second before picking it up. I can’t litter on my first day here; there’s enough shit lining these city streets already. I tossed my trash and resumed my walk.
An extra hour of walking led me fifteen streets north to Bryant Park. An ambient energy radiated from that direction. At this time, it was dark outside, and the buildings were lighting up. An empty stage lit up the center of the park. There must have been a concert there a few hours ago, as volunteers were packing up the chairs. Despite the concert being over, the park was filled with people lounging on the greenery. It put me at ease. Seeing other people enjoying the moment reminded me that I didn’t need to rush.
So I stuck around in Bryant Park for a bit and soaked up the energy.
My last stop of the night was Times Square. It was the only planned part of the walk; you gotta make the pilgrimage on day 1. I expected a crowded tourist trap, and that’s exactly what I got. I pushed my way through a few crowds, watched some breakdancers perform, and pushed my way out of the cesspool. It was a quick foray, but I needed to check that box.
At this point it was legitimately getting late. I tried to avoid people as I made my way back to the Airbnb, but even the off-streets were littered with people. Like jeez, don’t you New Yorkers have work tomorrow? Or I suppose people in this city have lives outside of work. I had never felt this much energy outside on a Thursday night. It was like the city was a living, breathing creature. And somehow, I felt a little bit more alive myself.
Eventually it got quiet as I reached the block of my Airbnb. While walking back, I reflected and tried to make sense of the day. This place is a bit weird, but I’m choosing to be in the middle of this weirdness. I paused before the steps of the brownstone, still lost in thought. Is this what living feels like? Only then was my trance broken as two rats scurried past me into a big bag of trash. Welcome to New York.
(Note for those who read to the end: I originally planned to write multiple vignettes from the month, but the blog post is long enough as-is. I’ll probably share more stories across multiple blog posts.)
So are you planning to move to NYC? :)
Wow didn’t expect you to be up. I am actually moving back to Arlington in a month. Liked the energy and food in NYC, but I feel the “tax” is just too high….dirty street, crowded subway. Arlington is just the right balance. To your point on “waiting to die”, I am wondering what is a good life looks like to you, we all have our own definitions