It's 7 p.m. and I take a generous sip of red wine. I let the warm elixir warm the heart that was beating too fast all day, and then I finally take the deep breath I've been missing. In an attempt to relax I find myself thinking about what else I need to be doing and wondering what tomorrow will look like.
I sulk to myself and take a few more generous sips until the glass is empty - and at that point, I actually can't look at it half full.
I guess you could say I've had a bad day.
It happens, and it happens to all of us. We screw something up at work, we snap on someone we love, we get reprimanded, we trip on the sidewalk, we spill coffee on our shirts, we text a screenshot to the person you were screenshotting - we mess up.
And when we do it feels like it's a thousand things at once. It feels like every mistake, even the ones you didn't think you cared about, are closing in on you. It's suffocating and debilitating being in the bubble of anxiety that you yourself blew up.
Lately, I've been having a lot of bad days. Maybe it's because I'm too hard on myself. Or maybe it's because I'm genuinely losing my mind. All that aside, I know that it's not a great feeling to go to sleep next to the worry of tomorrow and the uneasiness of yesterday.
It's not a great feeling, but I found something that was. The next day I took a walk around New York City. I actually took my lunch break and I walked. I walked and I looked. The high rises towered above me, the Brooklyn Bridge stood firmly across from me, and the self-starters kept walking by me - not stopping for anyone.
I guess you could say I've had a bad day, but how bad could it really be in New York City?
I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of people somewhere in those high rises across the concrete jungle having a bad day. Maybe it's just one day, maybe it's a week, or maybe they're the lucky ones that can brush it off hours later. Yet at the end of the day... it might not have been ideal, but it was still a day we lived in New York City.
I guess you could say it's about the bigger picture. The world is bigger than just you and it has opportunities you're not taking. The universe has plans bigger than your bad day. This city - being in this city - is bigger than a bad day you're never going to remember.
This is the city that makes you learn to push through bad days, bad weeks, and bad months. It's the city that makes you more resilient from falling. It's the city that makes you stronger from your failures. Honestly, there are probably more people in New York City f*cking up than in any other city.
But we're also the ones that do something incredible out of failure. We mess up, and we learn. We make disaster beautiful. We turn chaos into art. We are a city of dreamers that probably have never had it easy. Bad days are our specialty, but coming out brighter is our profession.
I'm human and I make mistakes. I'm authentic and I'm caring and that's probably why I allow anxiety to swallow my heart. Yet I'm also someone who once upon a time took a chance on herself and moved to New York City. And because of that, at the end of the day... how "bad" could the day really be?
That generous glass of wine might've helped initially, but it's the view of the city that really cured me. It's (quite literally) the biggest reminder that life is not over - it's only just beginning. And every day in this magical city is a day that you can start over. It's an entire city of possibilities and resolutions just waiting for you.
I guess you could say I had a bad day, but this city reminded me why it shouldn't be.
With the skyline in front of me, I remembered: I live here. And I can't just exist here. I need to thrive here. So I'm going to keep messing up until I find the right solution and I'm going to keep creating disasters until someone calls it talent. I'm going to keep trying and keep pushing until I break every wall I have ever built. I'm going to believe in myself again - the same way I believed in myself when I packed my bags to move here.
Bad days happen, but bad days in New York are still better than anywhere else.
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