The city of apples…
I’ve been here for four months now and it still doesn’t seem real. I catch myself walking the streets and being hit with an inherent sense of awe inspired by the city. The buildings, titans of architecture that steal the gaze of tourists and locals alike. The energy of the streets propels you forward with motivation and literally, there’s no moving slowly here. As a shameless Floridian, the recent snow flurries have me feeling like I’m walking out my front door into a personal winter wonderland. With so many sources of inspiration around every corner, this city takes anyone’s ambitions and cranks them to eleven.
It hasn’t been four months of inspired bliss though. The first few months were fueled more by a natural anxiety humming silently in the back of my head, that I was blindly trying to medicate with weed, alcohol and a relatively sedentary lifestyle. I wasn’t even thinking about it at first. Just following my lizard brain that said, “These things feel good, do more.” It wasn’t to any degree that garnered worry with my friends or family, but just enough that when I finally came out of the haze at some point, I said, “Huh. I could probably benefit from a break of this.”
So I adopted a starkly different lifestyle. A month of no drinking, no smoking, eating healthy, following a program in the gym, meditating daily, journaling daily, and tracking how consistent I was with each habit. I called it my dopamine detox. I was essentially trying to replace all of the dopamine vices with positive and productive dopamine inhibitors. Now that that month is over, I can say that it was an incredibly beneficial journey to take myself on. Taking such good care of myself put me in a better situation physiologically with better nutrition and exercise producing better hormones and energy levels, but to level up again, taking care of all the mental clutter of my life made room for self respect. My self-esteem is normally pretty healthy, but it’s at an all time high right now. Every time I was able to say no to something that I was used to accepting without a second thought, I proved to myself that I had discipline, I had willpower, I had value. Then add the self reflection and psyche exploration of meditation and journaling where I could pursue more of my good qualities and learn to accept the bad, it made for a powerful combination.
Now I’m in a space where my heart and mind are more open than ever to take in the energy of New York City and harness it to make some big moves. I’ve been working harder and more efficiently in the last few weeks than ever before in my life, and I feel full. Just a general contentment with the trajectory of my life right now and knowing that I’m starting a brand new chapter of it on a very healthy foot.
So there’s my personal update. If anyone has questions about the process, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, prepare for more photo posts on here! :)
-Tyler