collaborative storytelling that is equal parts critical and creative

SETTING GOALS

Allison Conley​

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I moved to New York City from Poughkeepsie on July 28, 2018. I had signed the lease two weeks earlier before seeing the apartment. After we signed the lease uptown, my roommates and I drove south on the Brooklyn-Queens expressway, where you can see all of Manhattan just to the side, to Central Brooklyn to see the apartment. I drove on the expressway a lot before moving, always kind of gasping at sideline view of skyscrapers that look more like a geographical force than structures. 

 

This is a sequel. 

 

When I lived in Poughkeepsie, my main source of anxiety (besides climate change) was an inability to set goals. I felt that a set of coherent goals oriented around career objectives would provide structure to my decisions. Without goals, I felt lost. 

 

On my first day of work, I took the A train to Port Authority and walked to avenue blocks to Sixth. I eventually advanced, transferring to the F train at Jay Street instead, and by now I’ve finally figured out I should really transfer to the express B or D at West 4th. My commute is down to 44 minutes, “not bad” for New York, but still takes up at least twelve percent of my waking hours. 

 

New York City is hard to get out of. It runs on its own logic. Taking the Metro North or Amtrak out feels like a magic passageway. When I take a bus to New Hampshire to see my mom, the bus struggles to wind out of the city.

 

Navigating this city has to thrill me or I’ll hate it. 

 

I usually read on the train. I was reading Normal People by Sally Rooney while leaning against an opening door, and I almost fell onto the platform at Canal Street. I was reading A Little Life when I missed the Howard Beach-JFK stop. The train went across a narrow strip of water crossing the Long Island Sound before I could get out and switch trains the Rockaways. The scene looked like Spirited Away. I couldn’t believe that the A train went to this crazy liminal space, across this peninsula, out to a beach neighborhood every day before picking me up in Central Brooklyn and making its way through the West Village and up to the Cloisters. 

 

A year ago, all I could think about was when and under what conditions I should leave the job and town I had entered. Now, that space is taken up by thinking about navigating in the relative present.

 

I was reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh when two women got into a physical fight about whether or not one was speaking too loudly and, ironically, needed to read a book. I read Orange World by Karen Russell on the G train the first time I went to Greenpoint during the daylight. The way Greenpoint Avenue slopes down to the East River reminds me of all the Main Streets in the Hudson Valley reaching down toward the river. 

 

I pick up my books at the 42nd street New York Public Library on my lunch breaks. After you check out your book, an employee double checks that your book receipt matches the book you’ve checked out before you can leave. It’s redundant and weird, but the same woman does it so seriously every day. I’ve been going to the library at least once a week for almost a year, but she’s never shown recognition toward me. Today she smiled and told me she liked my dress and asked me what pattern it was. Flowers? I told her. I had no idea. Pretty, she told me. 

For me, being in New York isn’t getting there. But being here makes me want to look around. It makes me appreciate running into dead ends, hitting rock bottoms and experiencing the kind of highs my twelve-year-old self would be impressed by. Being somewhere feels like getting there to me.