a bookish nyc trip, unwound
There's a book haul in this one!
In late July, during the dog days of summer, I found myself on a book-centric trip to New York City. I’m no stranger to the city—as a Philadelphia native and an author, I often found myself on a $20, two-hour bus ride to some book event or author meetup. But this past trip was more of a tradition than the others.
My friends Joelle, Joel, Circe, and I live very, very far from each other. (One of us is literally across the ocean.) Once a year, the four of us try to convene in NYC. It is both a vacation and an opportunity to bounce ideas, projects, and publishing gossip off each other.
It’s one of my favorite traditions. Now that I’m in grad school, I feel like I’m in a constant battle to enjoy my life outside of reading articles, studying textbooks, and sitting through three-hour lectures.
The spring semester was difficult for me. I was constantly exhausted and my brain didn’t feel like my own. My weeks were a monotonous drag of homework, classes, internship, and not much else. My life didn’t feel like much of a life.
This summer, I was determined to return to myself, to the written word, to the world. I wanted to soak up the sun and new experiences. I wanted to live again. I wanted to write, to read, to see my friends, to feel like a whole person. And this trip allowed me to indulge in that.
