The Top Ten Rules For Traveling in New York City So You Don't End Up Hating It

If you know me at all (even a little bit) you know that I love New York City. But my obsession didn't start with one trip, one ride in a cab, or those two tickets to Hamilton. (Although to be honest, the Hamilton experience didn't hurt.) No, my love for New York City grew in my heart the way the sun rises, slowly—so imperceptibly that it's hard to actually distinguish when the night ended and the day began. Part of my slow-growing love, though, came from making a lot of mistakes. I've made ALL of the rookie mistakes. I've done ALL of the things that people desperately want to avoid so they don't look uncool. Whatever. New York gets you. It trips you up with its obstacles and people and differences from every other city in America. But it doesn't do this with prejudice. New York isn't out to get tourists. It's just out. And if you know it's quirks, and some quick tips—I believe you will grow to love it just as much as I do. (Okay, maybe not that much... but a lot.)

Don't look at your phone in the cab.

It's tempting. You've just arrived off the plane. You're excited. Where to first? The cab line! You wait and you tell the driver where you want to go, and then you sit there for half an hour as he bumps and stops through traffic, all through the city. It's extremely tempting to check in on your e-mail, your social-media, to take a cab selfie and post it... or whatever you're about to do. But DON'T. You will get sick. Cab nausea is a thing, and it is as hard to kick as a hangover once you get out of the taxi and onto the street. Don't start your first day in New York off with motion sickness. Trust me. Put the phone away.

Bring water and a large tote.

I know you're not allowed to bring water on the plane, but that doesn't mean you can't bring an empty water bottle and fill it up as soon as you arrive at Laguardia. Water is essential in the city and helps to ward off the aforementioned cab-nausea. If you're going to have a water bottle with you, I'd also recommend (especially for the ladies) carrying a large tote bag rather than a small purse. That way, as the day goes on, you have a place for little souvenirs or things you pick up, as well as that water bottle. You want your hands free.

Go to the bathroom whenever you're given the chance, because you won't always have the chance.

This rule is kind of obvious, but much to my chagrin, I often forget to follow it. Especially if you're keeping water close at hand, it's important to take any opportunity you're given to use the john. If you're in a pinch, the city hides its bathrooms in large department stores and Starbucks coffee shops.

How To Pack For New York City

by

clairecgibson

featuring

braided scarves

Wear Sneakers.

Sneakers are to city living as water is to the fire department: essential and live-saving. Invest. (These are my current favorites. These are another pair I love. And another.) Wear them with pride. If you're afraid of looking like a tourist, check out the next rule.

Pack in Three Easy Steps: (1) Grab everything you have that is black. (2) Pack it. (3) Oh wait. Sorry, just two easy steps.

New Yorkers don't wear black because they're mean or boring. They wear it because they've learned the city—and you WILL sweat, no matter the season. Black helps you avoid embarrassing sweat stains and also helps you to pull off those sneakers you're not used to wearing. Almost any sneaker looks awesome against an all-or-mostly-black attire. Also -- you won't have to worry about choosing what to wear and wasting precious time each day. Just throw on the black and go.

Use the Subway Without Fear.

The Metro isn't hard and it isn't dangerous. Fill up a Metro Card with $20 (there are little touch-screen kiosks in every station), and you can share that one with your fam. Just swipe, move through the turnstile, and pass the card back for the next person to swipe. (This is much easier than buying a card and for everyone to have to dig in their pockets for their card while the rest of New York waits behind you, annoyed.) Take a cab, only whenever absolutely necessary. If the light is on, the taxi is available to hail. Nothing is more embarrassing than spending all your energy yelling at taxis that already have people inside of them. (Been there. Done that.)

Stay Local.

Do a neighborhood... not the city. For example, Soho is great for shopping. The Upper East Side is great for little cafes and strolling through Central Park. Midtown/Times Square is good for nothing. By keeping your adventures limited to a neighborhood, you'll help yourself from burn-out and save some things for your next trip. (Because you'll want to come back.)

Four meals a day.

If you're visiting the city, you're going to be on the go a lot walking, seeing, experiencing. By choosing to eat four or five small meals a day rather than three big ones—you'll give yourself a bit more flexibility to sit back and take a rest when the afternoon comes and you've been walking for a long time. Eat breakfast at 8 a.m., lunch at 12 p.m., a later lunch around 4 p.m., and then a proper dinner at 8 p.m. or later. Little stops for coffee or juice are also good excuses to get off your feet (and find a bathroom).

Take your time.

NYC gives you the feeling that everyone is moving a hundred miles an hour, but that's not necessarily true. They just know where they're going. Most people in the city follow the same route every day—walk these blocks, take this subway, go into the office, then do the same commute in reverse. If you're exploring the city, it's okay to not know where you are. Just pause, move over to the side of the road, look at your phone, figure out where you're going. No one will fault you for this. They will fault you for standing in the middle of the sidewalk and trying to figure it out.

Do one thing you would normally do at home in the city.

For me, that's going to brunch. For someone else, that might be going on a run or going to a yoga or spin class. That might mean finding a ju-jitsu gym or tracking down the best beer brewery. The coolest thing about NYC is imagining how your life might look if you lived there. And no one lives in Times Square.

So there you have it people. My ten tried and true rules for loving New York City. Do you have any tips that you would add to the list?

(P.S. -- here's an old post about my past rules for NYC. You can see how they've changed.)

Beyoncé, Misogyny and God

I sneezed on the beat and the beat got sicker. "What's the big deal about Beyonce, other than her butt?" my mother asked yesterday via face-time.

"Are you kidding? She's amazing!"

"I couldn't name one of her songs."

"Yes you could. You know... all the single ladies, all the single ladies." I flipped my left hand back and forth at the screen, showing the signature move for the 2009 smash hit that just so happened to drop during my senior year in college, when I was a single lady and he definitely should have put a ring on it.

"And that song inspires you?" my mom said with a smirk.

"Absolutely," I laughed.

The truth is that her most recent album, Lemonade, is even more of an inspiration (though I wouldn't dare recommend my mom watch it from start to finish, unless I were there to help her translate things like Becky with the good hair, etc.). There's enough on the internet about the anger, redemption and artistry of that album, so I won't wax poetic about it here. But suffice it to say, it's an album that makes me uncomfortable. It's an album that made me feel what she must have felt like during one of the roughest parts of her life. It's an album that puts words to some of the ups and downs in my own marriage.

What's worse looking jealous or crazy, jealous or crazy?

I've never been one for big arena shows because tickets are expensive, and even if you bite the bullet and shell out, chances are it won't be enough to really see the person you've paid to see. From the "J" section seat on the floor of the Titans Football Stadium (that seats 70,000 during a sold-out game), the best view I got of Beyoncé  was through a sea of cell phones held up by other spectators zooming in to prove that they, too, were here.

And yet, the show was incredible. I won't downplay it. Beyoncé sampled everything in her repertoire from Crazy in Love, Drunk in Love, and Halo to Partition, Charlies Angels, Survivor... the list goes on and on. She played portions of most of her songs on Lemonade, augmented by a massive three-dimensional rotating screen that alternated from projecting large images of her (so people could see) and video clips from the opus. Decrepit buildings, swinging lights, stills of strong African-American women; the ultimate survivors. Halfway through the show, two cannons shot off confetti into the air. There were fireworks, huge flames, a pool where her back-up dancers kicked up water as they moved to the beat. Countless costume changes. Acrobatics. The production was epic—a picture of what happens when you have millions to spend on every  possible theatric to make people feel.

Here are a few things I felt:

One:  I felt a desire to live with more passion and confidence. Beyoncé is a powerhouse. I've heard that she taps into an inner diva before getting on stage, and even has her alter-ego Sasha Fierce to combat any feelings of insecurity. To see that kind of confidence in another woman is contagious. How would my experience of the world change if I could wake up in the morning with that kind of confidence? To walk with the kind of chin-up assuredness of a person living out their dream, their calling—with all of their God-given talent on display?

Two: I felt a desire to be more free. The booty is real. I mean. I don't know if she was wearing leggings or some sort of industrial spray-paint to keep it looking flawless all night, but the girl can move it. Again, there's something jaw-droppingly incredible about a woman embracing her body and dancing and allowing herself to be free. Even the way she moved her hair—head-banging with the best of the 90s grunge kids—speaks to a kind of reckless freedom. I want more of that in my life.

Three: I felt convinced that I'm a different kind of feminist than most. Feminists walk a fine line between embracing femininity, sexuality and pleasure and reinforcing misogyny and sexual objectification. There were times that I felt uncomfortable last night at the overtness of it all. At one point, the singer climbed across a large three-dimensional phallic sculpture and most video clips included snapshots of an orchid in bloom—a clear reference to the female anatomy. Some of the costumes and dance moves, veered from making me feel free to making me feel like I was watching a person in bondage—something that didn't make me feel empowered, but isolated.

Last night, I felt convinced that true feminist authors, writers, musicians... must work to show that sexuality isn't the only weapon in a woman's arsenal of power.

Four: I felt surprised by my desire for God.  Even an over-the-top, crazy experience like a Beyoncé concert leaves you wanting more. She could only sing a verse and a chorus of most songs. For example, Beyonce's song Freedom from the album Lemonade is my absolute favorite. It's an incredible anthem, and despite the fact that she and her dancers gave a jaw-dropping performance using a similar water-stage to this year's Grammy Awards—she didn't have time to sing the whole song, and even if she did, it just isn't complete without Kendrick Lamar. All the theatrics in the world still come up short from what we really want.

And what we really want, we'll never get out of Beyoncé. Standing there, looking at a woman on the stage that is just as human as every woman in the crowd, it reminded me that all of our efforts on this side of heaven—even when we are  confident, passionate and free—pale in comparison to the glory we desire. We were made to see God in his splendor, not humans.

And for that reason, I am even more thankful for Beyoncé. A great artist points viewers to a greater creator. She did.

When you love me, you love yourself. Love God herself.

How to Finish A Novel (Or Anything Big).

I've been in a weird season of my life. If I could start with this time last year, and walk you moment by moment to today, I think the conversation would end with your jaw wide open. Seriously. The ups and downs have knocked me around so much that at times, I didn't think I would be able to get up off the floor. But sometimes faith is just that. It's getting up. Again and again and again.

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I made no resolutions for 2016. I didn't promise myself to finish the novel I've been working on. (I'd promised myself that in 2013, 2014, and 2015—by this year, I'd learned my lesson.) If it finished, it finished. If it kept festering and growing and changing, well then, so be it.

I didn't plan. That was hard for me. I'm a planner. I like to know what's coming. Better yet, I like to construct what's coming. But the back-half of 2015 taught me that nothing is in my control. So without a plan, I started 2016, and quickly, all of my fears were realized. Things fell apart. Emotions I'd buried deep under the surface came to the surface. With no tasks to complete or boxes to check or doctors to visit, all I had left was me and my straight-up confused mind to contend with. What I had left was grief.

I don't know how other people finish novels. I've heard of people "sitting in a chair" at 9 a.m. every day with a word count goal in mind. I've heard of people breaking up the story into small, manageable assignments. I've heard of an author that put on mechanic's jumpsuit everyday to remind himself that he, too was a tradesman. I've heard of people renting out hotel rooms or cabins in the woods to crank out drafts. None of that worked for me. (Although, to be fair, I never tried the jumpsuit.)

To finish the novel, I had to do two things: (1) accept incoming encouragement and (2) face my own grief. Maybe it's presumptuous. But I think those two pillars are the foundation of any big creative endeavor.

Accepting encouragement is not easy to do. First, it requires that you share your work. That means at some point you have to click save, export the file, attach it to an email, press send, and then proceed to freak out. Are they reading it right now? What do they think? If they're not reading it, they probably never will. People are too busy these days to read rusty manuscripts anyway. Why did I even send it? They probably hate it, and if they hate it, it's going to put them in such an awkward position. What do you say to a friend who has worked on something for three years, only to find out that it sucks? It is at about this point that I start wishing Gmail had an "unsend" button. But it doesn't. Thank God.

When encouragement comes, you have to believe that the encourager is telling the truth. This is hard. We live in a society that believes that white lies are acceptable. Knowing I live in that kind of society makes me think twice when you say you liked my novel. Telling me you loved my manuscript is the equivalent of saying, 'No way! You definitely don't look fat in that dress.' I want to believe you, but I'm just not so sure I've put you in a position to be honest with me. Lie and say you love it, and I'll think you're lying. Honestly say you love it, and I'll think you're lying, too. Sure, I'm probably right half the time, but I get no further in the draft. And that's the whole point... to get further on in the journey.

Here's what I've learned: you need two groups of encouragers. First: people who haven't been afraid to correct you on your shit in the past because you know they aren't afraid to hurt you. Second: people who don't really know you and have no "dog in the hunt" so to speak. Those two groups are GREAT for encouragement. But the middle group: acquaintances, fellow writers, neighbors, friends who are really nice... those are the people that you might as well not even share your work with. Not yet anyway. They probably don't feel free to give you honest feedback, and you won't believe what they have to say anyway. Send to your work to these people, and you'll just have wasted everyone's time.

But real encouragement filled with some ideas for improvement is like medicine to a writer's soul. It makes the writing worth it. It makes the process far less painful. And speaking of pain...

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To finish something great, you must face your grief. The world is full of distractions that seek to pull us out of our pain into comfort. But unfortunately, as mentioned above, meaningful work is painful. It's toil. It's training. It's sweat and tears. It's the montage that most movies pass over quickly and add inspiring music to, because if they were to show the REAL slog, the movie would take too long and people would walk out.

Us creative-types try to tackle the pain of our work while simultaneously avoiding the pain of our past. Hear me on this. THAT. DOES. NOT. WORK.

During that time between the starting and the finishing, any unaddressed pain from the past will come to the surface. It just will. And suddenly, giving into comfort becomes the only way to survive. The pain (of our work) goes untouched. The pain (of our past) is ignored. And meanwhile, we push fragments of glass pieces around on the table, imagining that we're making progress, while we indulge in wine, alcohol, shopping, or any other addiction to pass the time. I say this with kindness. It's not inherently wrong to find comfort, but comfort is the enemy of progress and growth. And if you want to finish a novel, you're not going to do it at the mall.

But while you're at the mall... or while you're pouring that drink... you might as well think about why you're there. (This, as it turns out, is the progress.) What is the pain that you haven't addressed? What grief or sorrow or shattered dream haven't you looked at in the face? If we aren't able to weep over the difficult things of our own lives, we won't adequately connect or inspire others as they muddle through theirs.

For me, facing my own grief has meant a lot of tears. A lot of counseling. A lot of time with people that have a lot of patience for me. It also has meant having very hard conversations with the people I love (and hurt) the most. It's meant taking my hurt and pain to God and asking what he wants to give me instead. It's releasing that pain so that I can re-engage with the pain of work, without feeling overwhelmed.

So there you have it. To finish any big work of art... hear encouragement, face your own grief in the face, and then sit down and get to work.

Good luck. Grab the tissues. You can do it.