Moving Forward...

A long awaited life update!

A part of me wanted to publish this newsletter with only the following statement:

Because I did.

I.

MOVED. 

My address has changed.

I have a new subway station. A new grocery store. Even a new bodega cat! 

My local bodega cat!

Words keep failing me when I try to explain my thoughts and feelings on all of this, but if you couldn’t tell from the punctuation above, I’m very excited.

It’s not my first time living alone or my first time living in Manhattan. I still have the same old pots and pans and familiar furniture. But for the first time in my life, I’m living ALONE in MANHATTAN in an apartment with only my name on the lease.  

It all feels very grown up.

Moving is inevitably stressful. I keep staying up late trying to wash glasses that have been in storage for months or rearrange my socks the way I want them. I’m the kind of person that thrives in an organized environment. I refold shirts in my closet for fun. Not having any pictures on the wall or all my furniture picked out, makes me feel a little scattered. There’s still so much to do in the space but getting to do all those things is part of the fun.

I feel incredibly lucky that I found my little one-bedroom in the cutthroat Manhattan real estate Hunger Games. My apartment is only four flights up - the perfect amount of stairs to give me a little exercise without discouraging me from leaving the apartment. It’s a nice size by New York standards and even BIG by Manhattan standards. I have faux wood blinds and a real kitchen with counter space. I get sunlight and have semi-high ceilings. Best of all, the closet (almost) fits all my clothes. It’s the stuff I dreamed of.

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Somewhere between getting into USC and 2023, I noticed my dreams getting smaller.

Friends have frequently heard me say the “new dream” is an apartment, a cat, and a life. I don’t know if it’s getting older, graduating, or seeing behind the sequin curtain of the entertainment industry that made me a little more gun-shy about dreams of Oscars and two-floor penthouse apartments.¹ Regardless, my personal ambitions shifted, and I think it was out of necessity.

More than anything, I needed a dream that would help me get my sea legs back. People rent apartments in New York every day, but to me, it felt like a really big move.² Could I live alone? Could I afford Manhattan? What if all the people who told me to wait, save, or move to another city were right?

This rocky road of adulthood seems all about committing to something and having faith you’ll be able to figure it out. So I created my dream of an apartment and a cat because I believed with my whole heart I would find a way to figure it out. If I could do this, - something that feels like a simultaneously small and momentous step - maybe it would set me up with the foundation to build the broader future I’m hoping for.

So, after a few months of manifesting, agonizing, and wondering, here I am. I’ve taken the leap and landed safely on the other side. I’ve been able to make it happen, besides the cat (unless we count my new friend from the corner bodega).

I’ve achieved this era’s dream, and with that checked off my list, there’s space for big ambitions again. I find myself hungry and excited even to ask:

“What’s next?”

Outfit of This Era:

Granted, the vest is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, but this is a classic Sophia work look. Black turtleneck, gold jewelry, and a statement belt buckle - you can’t go wrong. Plus a hard-to-see tye-dye mask!

Recommendations for This Era:

• HIRE MOVERS - Cannot stress this one enough.

• Corner diners.

• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

• Sunday shopping sprees at Home Goods.

• One really warm purely-for-function-not-fashion puffer coat.³

• Margarita pitchers.

• A Muji toothbrush holder.

• “Seventeen” by Sharon Van Etten

• Over the door hooks.

Apartment Photo of This Era:

Unboxing records in the new crib!

1. It remains my dream to live in an apartment with a dramatic central staircase. Then I could invite people over just to descend the staircase to greet them.

2. “Move” in the figurative sense.

3. My high school self would have balked at this, but she also always had a head cold through January and February.