Life Gets Better When You Have Skills
About my time living in New York
I’ve often written about how I feel lost in life, and how my path forward is unclear, professionally speaking.
I grew up facing little academic difficulty, and I didn’t learn to work through serious problems until I was an adult. Even when something was difficult, I just had to practice a couple of times, and the rest could be improvised.
Later, when I got to NYU, it didn’t matter that I got a 5 on the AP Calculus exam - I got a C in Math for Econ. first semester.
Instead of going to the library and studying with laser-focus for a little bit everyday, I had other things on my mind. My conclusion was that, if I’m not good at math (I was good at math, I just didn’t want to do the work), I’ll do what comes naturally, and that was French.
Learning a foreign language was mandatory at NYU, and I decided to continue with French. I had taken three years of French in high school, but I tested into a level B1 class in university.
I grew up functionally bilingual, speaking Russian at home and English everywhere else. At 18, I was still at an age when languages were easy to absorb (I wish I knew then how difficult learning would become as an adult).
To my mom’s dismay, I switched my major to French literature. Intellectually speaking, these were the best years - once I got to level C1, all of my classes were in French.
NYU happens to have one of the best French departments in the United States (and perhaps the world), and I got to learn and write about French literature from the leading scholars on the subject.
The difference between math and writing was that writing wasn’t a chore for me. I spent hours writing these papers, endlessly consulting online dictionaries and source texts. It was excited to create something new, which is not possible for me with mathematics.
I fondly remember going to Bobst (NYU’s massive library next to Washington Square Park) at 9pm, buying a black Starbucks cold brew from the vending machine ($4 in 2018!) and sitting at one of the computers (didn’t have my own laptop) and writing a 10-page paper in French until 6am.
I didn’t know it then, but those were some of the most fascinating years of my life.
Reality Check
I graduated on May 20, 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. University commencement was canceled. Instead, they sent us a very strange graduation video, which I remember watching from a co-working space by myself in Manhattan.
I remember that day vividly, biking in Midtown with very few cars and living in a bubble of isolation, like everybody did at the time.
It felt surreal - I was finally free. Little did I know, that the next four years would be filled with bad decisions, debt and an adventure that will never be repeated.
I had worked as a waiter intermittently throughout university, and the day in-person dining resumed in Manhattan, I began working at Boucherie in the West Village.
Even at a restaurant like Boucherie (on the expensive side, but not fine dining by NYC standards), the pay was a bit limited as people weren’t dining out like they did pre-2020.
I worked there for a few months and later quit when one of the managers went on vacation, and his temporary replacement thought managing people meant screaming at them.
I then worked in commercial real estate, renting retail space in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I made real money for the first time in my life, but I dreaded going to work more than I did when I was a waiter.
Most people thought I was trying to scam them, and overcoming the lack of trust in that business (the industry is full of unscrupulous individuals) was extremely emotionally taxing.
I was living in a room in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for $800/month (a steal) when the landlord doubled the rent. That’s when I decided to reset my life.
I had enough credit card airline miles to buy a one-way ticket to Tbilisi for $20. I quit my job, sold my car and made the single most consequential decision of my life.
Back on Track
I’ve already recounted my time in Tbilisi on this blog, so I won’t repeat myself here (look at the previous articles if you’re not up to speed).
Between the gallery and the e-commerce store, I’ve realized that I’ve been building a marketing skillset by accident. I’ve had to figure out how to promote events, get traffic onto websites and get sales, with mixed results.
I’ve grown multiple Instagram accounts to thousands of followers (it’s a start). I now need to go all in on this skillset - not my passion.
Passion is bullshit you tell yourself to fuel your ego. I don’t care how much you like doing something, when you’re doing it full-time for money, it will become very unpleasant at times and will ruin your relationship with that thing.
Glad to hear you’re doing well