Maps & Raps - Austin & NY

Fri, May 17th 2013

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday, all!

I’m diving into something a little more personal today. My second anniversary of living in New York is quickly approaching (June 1!), so I wanted to do a recap of my time here.

Tags friday growing up New York travel

11:11am | 3 ♥ | Comment

Tue, May 14th 2013

New York: Summer Things to Do!

(Image source: wsj.net)

Sharon shared some fun things to do during the summer in Austin yesterday, so I’ve rounded up some of my favorite summertime activities in New York!

I was born in July in arguably one of the hottest places on Earth, so I’m a summer baby at heart. I love the feeling of being outside all day, getting sweaty and jumping into a clear blue pool. New York is a city of extremes, meaning the summers can be miserable and humid, but I still look forward to them after a long, bleak winter, and here’s why:

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Tue, May 7th 2013

5 Ways to Unwind

It’s been very busy around these parts. Sometimes living in New York feels like a sprint – with hurdles and no finish line. It often seems we’re all rushing from one place to the next like chickens with our heads cut off and barely getting any shut-eye before we zoom off to work the next morning.

Even the weekends can be exhausting. We love to fill our calendars with boozy brunches and parties that end when the sun comes up. One of my coworkers said, “I feel like I need a weekend to recover from my weekend,” and I couldn’t agree more.

Regardless of where you live or what you do, life is bound to be punctuated with periods of stress and anxiety, but here are a few activities that always calm me down:

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Wed, May 1st 2013

Learning After Higher Ed

(Source: http://brooklyn-spaces.com)

I don’t miss college as terribly as most people seem to – that 50-page thesis about Chinese migrant workers still haunts me – but I do miss being in an environment where I am constantly learning and pursuing knowledge about subjects that aren’t necessarily applicable to everyday life.

Even though work is a steep learning curve in itself, you tend to hone in on a very specific set of skills and the rest of your education is left to your own devices.

It can be hard to find the motivation to learn anything after a long day at work, but it’s immensely more rewarding in the long run to listen to a great podcast or read a lengthy article than to see what the Real Housewives of New York are up to.

The best thing about not being in college is that you learn what you want to learn, on your own terms. There are so many little ways to engage yourself that don’t require a textbook (remember the pungent smell of old textbooks?) or listening to an old man wax poetic about an archaic scientific theory for hours.

Here are some fun things I do to keep my brain sharp:

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Mon, April 29th 2013

NYC: Sleep No More

It’s been a week since I “watched” Sleep No More and I’m still reveling in the experience. “Watched” seems like an inappropriate verb for what I was doing – it wasn’t as if I passively sat in a chair to a view the play. Sleep No More had me sprinting up and down flights of dimly-lit stairs, exploring the woods, chasing actors through corridors, and standing only inches away from a murder scene.

To provide some context, Sleep No More is the latest version of an interactive, site-specific work of theatre put on by the British theatre company Punchdrunk. The show has been wildly successful since its conception. The New York version takes place at the fictional McKittrick Hotel, which is actually three adjoining warehouses in Chelsea made into a mesmerizing space.

11:02am | 14 ♥ | Comment