My first job in New York was on a television show. I worked as a news assistant on “Mad Money,” a financial news show hosted by Jim Cramer on CNBC. It was the network’s flagship brand, airing weeknights at 6:00 p.m. ET.
I started my job one week after college graduation. I packed my journalism degree in my duffle bag in case anyone needed to see it. I took a one way flight from Austin, Texas to John F. Kennedy Airport at 12:45 p.m. on May 27th, 2016, when I was twenty years old. I remember the date and the time because I still have the ticket. I smoothed that ticket against my thighs again and again on the flight, marveling at the words “one way,” otherwise known as permission to never look back.
Where would I live once I arrived in New York? I wasn’t sure. I toured studio apartments with emerald green paint and warped wooden floors, unmade beds and overflowing trashcans. I learned what decades of cigarette smoke smelled like. To clean the kitchens you would have to “scrape before you scrubbed,” and these kitchens were also bedrooms. It was hot. Every apartment was a walkup. None were air conditioned. I walked miles across East and West Harlem, cell phone battery dying, time ticking away against the hotel reservation my father had paid up for three days. My salary, once I started my job, would be $25 an hour. Most landlords required income of 40x rent. My options dwindled. On the second day I stopped in the street, nauseous from the smells of trash, chicken shawarma, cab exhaust, and urine—scents which would later become so familiar—and I bent over. At my feet was a mural. It was the face of a boy who had died. He had died there, at that spot. He was a teenager. Candles flickered beneath his picture, love notes flapped in the occasional breeze. I’d never known someone who died. I didn’t know anything at all.
On the third day of searching, a real estate agent offered to lease me a room in an apartment, not an apartment itself. I could split a two-bedroom with a roommate paired up through the agency, which meant I could afford a newly renovated unit. My share of rent would be $1,600 per month. I agreed. I moved out of the hotel and into 118 W 109th Street, Unit #5E the next day.
My roommate’s name was Becca. She had long brown hair and green eyes. She was from New Jersey. She paid her rent in cash from waitressing jobs, smoked cigarettes on the fire escape, and took sketch comedy classes at United Citizens Brigade, hoping to meet Amy Poehler. She knew nothing either.
In the beginning, every task seemed impossible. Where would I sleep? I bought an air mattress and dragged it up five flights of stairs. What would I eat? I ordered takeout with the last of my money. My mom sent a box of dishes, cups, silverware, and skillets the next week.
What saved me was the women. “Mad Money”— executive produced for twenty years by a woman — was then staffed almost entirely by women. It was rare for corporate America, but it was especially rare for high finance, the world of CEOs and the men who wrote about them.
These women shaped me from raw clay into something useful. Here’s how you write a chyron. Here’s how you print scripts. Here’s how you put calls on hold. They taught me about companies, stocks, and bonds, but they also taught me the intangibles of adulthood. Sometimes I should speak up in team meetings, they said, but sometimes I shouldn’t. Sometimes I should go on blind dates, but also, sometimes, I shouldn’t.
They taught me what food to order at nice restaurants (burrata), which lipstick to wear with a red dress (nude), and how to protect black boots from salt stains on the city’s frozen sidewalks (leather conditioner). They taught me how to get a new apartment.
My first year in New York was the hardest. After that, everything got easier—editors invested in my writing, coworkers became friends, routines became familiar. I’ve been considering these memories as my daughter inches closer to her first birthday. I wonder, Will I survive this year, too?
In my early twenties, work was the core of my life; it was the hub circled by spokes. It gave me purpose (writing), geography (New York), and most importantly, context for inter-generational relationships. It gave me access to older, smarter people (editors) and silly, younger people (interns.) Wisdom and restaurant recommendations flowed up and down the corporate ladder.
Parenthood is not like that. I see other parents casually—at church, at mom’s group, at swimming lessons—but there isn’t a structure for sharing accumulated knowledge. I have to learn how to squirt raspberry flavored Tylenol into my child’s mouth by myself, and so does the mom next door.
“We’re all on an island,” one mom said to me recently. “Everything feels like it’s never happened before to anyone else, ever.”
Without the forcing function of a professional work environment, adult life can become quickly segregated. Young, old; married, single; school-aged kids, babies. Nowhere is this segregation clearer than at First Light Books, one of my favorite coffee shops and bookstores in Austin, tucked beneath oak trees in Hyde Park. The decor is mid-century modern, the espresso is strong, and the customers fall in two categories: Hipster-Gen-Z and Exhausted-But-Trying-Parents. The store is half novels, half kids’ books.
It’s a small store, but the two halves are completely separate. Toddlers scream in the kids’ section, parents stare into the middle distance. University students linger over lattes, thumbing through books, discussing problems which, to the parents, sound myopic and selfish. Allison P. Davis described the divide like this: “On one side: People With Kids (PWIKS: frazzled, distracted, boring, rigid, covered in spit-up; can’t talk about movies, only about how they wish they had time to see them). And on the other: People Without Kids (PWOKS: self-absorbed, entitled, attention whores, grumpy about life’s inconveniences even though their life is easy).”
Crossing the chasm seems impossible.
And yet, wouldn’t it be helpful for everyone to commingle? Women 10 years older than me know more about parenting, marriage, commitment. Women 10 years younger than me know more about self expression, art, and ambition. I could use both. We could use each other.
Staying at home with my daughter has revealed how an over-reliance on work—to provide our identities, our purpose, our friends—has left many American social structures decayed and deteriorating. In “Bowling Alone,” Harvard researcher Robert D. Putnam describes how the number of Americans who go bowling has increased, but the number of bowling leagues has decreased. Bowlers play alone, staring at flatscreen TVs.
If I wanted to, where could I meet more experienced mothers? Where could I meet younger friends? Loneliness is an epidemic. Where do we start?
I walk the baby on endless loops of our neighborhood, and I wave at the other mothers pushing strollers, but I don’t know a single one of their names. Everyone, including me, walks while listening to music or podcasts with AirPods. I take the baby to church groups several times a week, including a group specifically for new moms, but I leave once the formal meeting is over and the chit-chat begins. The truth is, I’m scared. That brave New York girl—the one who lugged an air mattress to a fifth story walkup—she’s scared to say hello. I’m scared to stand in my own skin (twenty extra pounds of baby weight, ragged clothes, a slick coating of baby vomit) and present myself as a messy, broken person. The girl who went to that office was polished. Professional. And on the days she wasn’t, at least she was thin.
In stronger moments, I remember that this memory is a lie. (I was a mess then too! With less self-awareness!) I remind myself that vulnerability is essential for relationships, and that the performance of perfection is hollow, damaging for everyone. In weaker moments, I keep my AirPods in my ears and I keep my eyes on my feet.
But if the fear is that simple—saying hello—the solution is that simple too. Saying hello. It’s a nerve-wracking, terrifying, infuriating, vulnerable place to start, full of the potential for rejection and failure—but so was moving to New York.
We still have bowling leagues here in Central Ohio. Here's one of many:https://bowlthepalace.com/leagues/
A 2013 study by the University of Cambridge confirmed Midwesterners had "moderately high levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness." One person described it as: "Inhabitants of the so-called heartland smile and wave at every person they come by, friends and strangers alike, on sidewalks and in supermarket aisles."
I'm originally from Ohio, who later lived in DC, Virginia, Michigan, Texas, and came back in Ohio. I can confirm it is true - that smile and say hello stuff. Somewhere in my past, I learned to say hello to strangers (unconsciously looking to make eye contact, wave, whatever). Most everyday, I walk and I unconsciously greet everyone who makes eye contact - where most , but not all, smile or wave in response.
So, make eye contact, smile and say hello to other moms with children and perhaps you will run into someone from Ohio, whose past learnings will prompt them to unconsciously respond in kind.
Best to you
amazing as always. thanks for writing this Ali