Swallowed

I do not have any great affinity to having a career in finance or accounting.  I do not consider it a calling, though it comes easily enough.  Job-wise, I have been happy to find adjacencies and nooks that allowed me to do other things under that banner; instead of auditing, forensic accounting and investigations, in place of forecasting and planning, analysis.

I worked a short stint in a data management function - the topic appealed to me primarily because I thought it an interesting exercise to codify data in order to make appropriate use of it, and in so doing, explore and overcome observational bias.  Defining things to a level of specificity required to enable proper usage was a bit of a challenge, particularly when you introduced a second person to evaluate that definition.  A four legged domesticated mammal that wags its tail is an apt description of a dog, until you have encountered a horse.  Additional complexity is introduced, until the act of definition feels exhausting, and the image of the subject you once held so clearly is now obscured.

I feel the same way about other aspects of my life, and about New York.  Where once it may have been difficult to think about leaving or how I or it could exist without one another, the introduction of other places befitting that description of home obscures the strong feelings I once had about this geography.  Without me, despite me, New York will persist, offering those stolen moments that I thought were only for me to new players.  There is a strangeness in that estrangement, and an impermanence.  Perhaps looking back, it will be a tangential point in my life after all, significant only to me because I was in it at the time; I was a direct observant of the daily events in the city play out. I wonder if this is how one feels about their hometown after having lived lives separate from it. 

My marathon training and biking have been an opportunity to explore the way I feel about the city.  Repeated revisits to the same locations is allowing me to refine the definition of how I feel and develop nuanced views (e.g., Chinatown at dawn is positively tranquil, but a cacophony of locals and tourist soon after).  I am developing new intimacies with New York by exploring new areas. Idiosyncracies, both positive and negative, start to appear.  I have been documenting them, some through photgraphy, to aid in a mental tallying of the pros and cons.

Bush - Swallowed.