What is your favorite aspect about this blog?!

This morning, someone set off a homemade pipe bomb in the subway tunnel between Port Authority and Times Square. 

No one died, thank god, and only a couple of people were injured. But it shut down the entire western artery of Manhattan. And as if we needed another reminder, Brooklyn is at the mercy of our big island neighbor... all of the trains in Brooklyn slowed to a crawl, then a halt.

I stood on the platform at Nostrand for over an hour. Finally, I realized that, best case scenario, I would get on a train and still not get to work for another hour. So I turned my ass around and walked back to my house to #WFH, and proceeded to have the most productive work day I've had in weeks. So I'm not going to SAY that an act of terror only succeeded in me having an opportunity to contribute more to the world around me but hey if you want to connect those particular dots I'm not going to stop you.

I have one more week of in-office, normal work days before I go back to Philly for 10 DAYS. 10. I'm not sure, but this might be the longest amount of time I've stayed in my childhood home since I left for college a billion years ago.

True Life: I still have intense anxiety about going home.

There's nothing there that's so bad. I love seeing my family, I love being fed fo' free, I love getting out of the city every once in a while. But there's something weirdly triggering for me in being in the place where I was so scared and defiant and insecure and obsessive for sooo many years. It makes me feel scared and defiant and insecure and obsessive, only now I'm an adult. And this is it. And I am me now. So I have to constantly remind myself that New York City Rose accepted herself (mostly) as-is years ago and this is just latent ennui that's been fermenting in the damp unfinished basement where I used to sleep. That basement...with some paint on the floors and walls, and a bed, and various Ikea accoutrements, that basement was a totally respectable stand-in for a first apartment and you better believe that's how I thought of it.

Today some guy on OKC asked me "What's your favorite aspect about the city?" Yikes.