Sure, in reality it’s just a Madison Avenue marketing ploy thought up to create buzz and customers for banking giant HSBC. It’s easy to dismiss it as a gimmicky and void of humanity. I’m walking down Seventh Avenue trying to decide whether or not I’ll be able to handle the lowering temperature or if I really belong back in California. Then I see it – a taxi cab – a a restored vintage Checker taxi cab. Upon closer examination though I discover it’s got the HSBC logo plastered all over it. Ever the license plate says HSBC – another guerrilla advertising stunt. I turn away and continue down the avenue. Just ahead there is some guy wearing jeans and a florescent t shirt handling out to-go menus. At least the HSBC cab had some character to it. I turn around and see people gathering around the car to talk to the bank cabbie. Something about the humanity of it made me turn around again and start walking to towards the cab. I had to speak to the driver as well.

New York tends to be a very impersonal place. You become used to ignoring people who look as if they’re about to collapse in front of you as they beg you for money for “a cup of coffee or something to eat.” People routinely feign interest in you in order to conduct business. “Sorry, I can’t give you money. Sorry, I don’t have time to chat. New York is expensive and fast paced and I have to keep up.” So I guess the idea of a cab driver chatting with people on the street really appealed to me. It may be a marketing ploy but it’s brilliant.

But the point of this post is not the cab itself. It’s the what the cab made me realize. The mere sight of human interaction on the street made me giddy. I’m craving human contact. No, I’m craving meaningful human contact – friends. As a seasoned mover, I’ve learned that you cannot survive in a city, any city, without strong friendships. I cried the day I moved from Las Vegas to Los Angeles because most of my time in Vegas had been very lonely. As I drove that U-Haul across the desert I realized I was abandoning friendships that had taken me two years to cultivate. Just recently I cried thinking about my friends in Los Angeles. For whatever reason when I left none of us really thought I would actually go. I was so ingrained into Los Angeles and close to my friends there. A friend of mine recently conveyed that he was still waiting for me to come back.

Should I go back? I don’t know. But one thing is clear – if I’m going to find out, I need to make some friends. The newness of the always new New York is waning and I’ve found myself wanting to stay on the phone for hours with particularly friendly T-Mobile customer service representatives when they ask what it’s like living in New York.

So this week, I’m starting again. What would I do if I just moved here? What brought me here? What made me leave the friends that I made in California – some of the best friends I’ve ever had? In a sea of yellow cabs can I feel like the bright, shiny HSBC cab? I owe it to myself to find out. For the past two months I worked my ass off to become a real estate agent and now I’ve got a job that gives me a certain amount of flexibility to pursue my dreams. So for now – perhaps for the first time in my life – I’ll look at the strengths of this day job and formulate a plan of attack given my current situation. I’ll audition, I’ll create and most importantly, I’ll go out out and work at cultivating my new and current friendships. I’m going to make New York a success. If I do decide to move back to Los Angeles I want to be absolutely certain that I gave New York a fair shot.

I gasp for air and grab a new piece of driftwood to take me to shore and remember that when one door closes another opens.

I bet you thought I’d forgotten about you. Well I’ve not — about two months ago I entered real estate school in New York and since recieving my license I’ve been working 12 hour days fairly regularly. I got tired of being poor. The rationalization for starting a career in the middle of a busy audition season was that I needed to if I was going to be here for the next busy audition season. At the end of my financial rope, I experienced regular hunger pains and dizzy spells. My closest friends were the creditors that called to torture me about my financial obligations. Though once a normal part of my life, New York City — at least as I was experiencing it, made these responsibilities seem impossible to meet. I was drowning in a sea of debt, hunger, and loneliness.

So it was time for a new plan. I tried applying for unemployment. Having been fired from a crappy restaurant, I figured I was entitled to collect on some of what I’d paid in taxes. Alas, the bureaucracy is not set up to help anyone who really needs it. After a month, I’d still not recieved a check. To this day, I’ve not seen a cent. So I borrowed the money I needed to get into real estate school, and the money I needed to pay part of my rent (I still owe the other hundred dollars which I used on food). It was a new financial low for me –no credit cards, no cash, and a heaping dose of humility.

I delved down into my soul and found the workaholic that I’d been in college, that boy who was the student senate president, a resident assistant, a music scholar, honor roll student with 25 credit hours and a part-time workstudy position for the head of the music department. My depression worsened but I held strong. I had to move forward. I had to succeed. Two months later I’m just starting to surface from the sea of sufficating fears that had consumed me. FDR said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. I think that was my mantra. That and another favorite expression of mine, “the best way to climb a mountain is one step at a time.”

So with two rentals under my belt and a busy next few months ahead until the next busy audition season (January), I’m starting to regroup and gain some balance and control in my life. I find myself in Starbucks — one of my favorite places — planning my life and writing this blog even though my website has been taken down because I didn’t pay for it. Wait how am I reading this? It’s back.

I guess this all must sound a little depressing. But the fact that I’m writing about it, means I’m ok. I’m here. I survived. I saw a tshirt the other day. It said, “Due to budgetary cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.” Things were tight — really tight. But thankfully, that bulb kept burning.