WordPressing in New York City, Day 8 of #WP20

Blog: Tell us about the strangest, most interesting, or otherwise noteable place you’ve done WordPress-related things. Post your response on a WordPress website and link it in the comments.

Picture it: New York 2022. Trips to NYC from the south only took place in the summer so I was freezing. I’ve never been this far north in the winter but there had been an emergency. My mother’s youngest brother, our family comedian, cook, and all-around savior, my uncle was sick. And my mom and I jumped on a flight to NYC in an instant.

I left midweek I believe. My job and coworkers are always ready to help whenever someone needed it. They are parts of the WP Community I would forever miss when if I leave left. Still, I took my computer with me because, you know, workaholic. Kidding kidding but I didn’t know when I would be returning. I had no idea how long I would be in NYC and eventually I would need to hop on to do some work.

Note* It was always my dream, and still is to work remotely from NYC. Where I’m living my best Sex and the City life. I guess you have to be careful what you ask for.

Toward the end of my trip…my uncle started to do a little better. I had prepared myself to come up and say goodbye. Instead, I told maybe not yet. Maybe is maybe but it’s better than nothing in times like this. I’ve experienced a lot of loss in the last few years and I never got to say goodbye. Maybe my bad luck was over.

As I bounced around from Queens to Harlem, relief hit me but also exhaustion. One of my friends who had gone to live out my dream, offered me a place to crash in the middle of hell’s kitchen as the Lyfts were piling up and the subway took so much time out of my day. The time I could spend with my uncle.

After a night of Thai food, light ice storms, and card games I found myself logging on to WordPress. Did I mention I left in the middle of the week? Work and everything? 😀 I needed to shoot some work I did up to staging and for the first time during the whole trip, things felt normal and calm. I was in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen, listening to people walk by and talk, fire trucks, horns, food vendors, and many other languages besides English. It was everything I had ever dreamed of.

half sausage and half pepperoni NY style pizza
The best pizza in the world to me, sorry Italian family

To those who have lived in cities their whole lives, especially NYC they at times can call it devoid of life. I grew up in trees and fruit and gardens and dirt. The biggest building in my town may have been the first Baptist church which was maybe 2 flights of stairs. And when you listened you heard nothing. Maybe crickets in the summer. That’s why to me I always thought they were crazy. Life was always in NYC. You heard everything, the city was a living breathing thing at all times and it never seemed to die. I wanted my dreams to always be of and like NYC, never dying and never-ending.

I sipped some coffee from the bodega/coffee shop across the street. My friend got us breakfast, “I don’t know if what you ordered is actually in this bag…I could order the same thing every time and never get what I actually asked for.” I listened to music that was on and let it combine with the sounds outside. I closed my eyes at times just to take a break. To listen. The sounds soothed me. I thought about what I would eat later on to keep the energy as I made my way through the city again. I loaded up WP Engine and thought about all the people who did this daily in their apartments in the city. I thought about how tragedy and sadness had brought me out of the stress of Carolina day to day life to a peaceful catharsis.

I thought about how I was doing WordPress in the strangest of times and because I was awake and not in my sweet dreams in the strangest of places. But for a few moments there I felt complete and utter peace.