07.27.04
Posted in miscellaneous stuff at 10:30 am by admin
it amazes me how much of a change i feel coming over me lately. i worked until 6:00 or so today and i won’t be home until nearly 8:30, but i don’t mind. i was in a meeting with some coworkers and the time didn’t even really concern me. i looked at my watch and determined that catching the earlier train didn’t even matter that much to me because i was having an important conversation about a job that i really care about.
since i wasn’t running to catch the train i took the time to observe the scenery that i pass on my way to the station at 33rd st. and i realized how lucky i really am. i strolled out of the office and saw the chrysler building towering above me, and walked past the new york public library (and every time i pass it i think about the flying books in ghostbusters). as i got closer to the station i looked up and was startled to see that i had been passing right by a clear view of the empire state building every day and hadn’t even noticed it. i crossed broadway, walked past macy’s at herald square and rushed to reach my train. it’s easy to take these things for granted, but this is the stuff that movies are made of.
today was a good day at work. every day i feel closer to my co-workers. we had our weekly meeting this afternoon and our vice president brought cupcakes for us to decorate. the meeting ran over, but it didn’t really feel like a meeting — more like a gathering of friends. if we had martinis it would have been perfect.
at lunch today, i went and took a tour of the bally sports club that’s one block from my office, because i’m considering working out during my lunch hour during the week. however, based on how long it would take me to shower and get dressed and get back to work, i figure it may be more like 75 minutes from start to finish.
so, i decided to take the chance and talked to my manager about the possibility of taking a longer lunch to accomdate my workout. he told me in no uncertain terms that it’s important to him that i have a life outside of work and if part of it needs to happen during lunch, it’s no problem because he knows the work will get done.
oh, and i got my business cards today. yay!! 
i will post a scan.
anyway, it’s clear to me that i’m in the most accomodating work environment that i’ve ever seen. so far, this really seems like it may be my dream job. i know i’m loving what i’m doing when i look forward to going to work every day, and when the 3 hours i spend on the train each day doesn’t even get to me.
* * *
there are a few fixtures in new york that are as common as honda civics in the suburbs (or hummers in kingwood). one of them is the street flier distributor. i feel really bad for these people. they spend their time in angst trying to hand out pieces of paper to people passing by who wave them away and rarely take them. after all, who wants to carry around a piece of paper?
today, i saw this woman who looked genuinely distressed. she was trying to hand out sheets of paper advertising $1 internet access. i don’t need $1 internet access, but i could tell from the look in her eyes that this is her livelihood.
what’s worse, she was wearing one of those big cardboard fixtures — a sign on her front and one on her back, connected with two pieces of rope — and she looked humiliated.
so i did my good deed for the day. i took one. i stepped up to her, and she looked away as though she knew i didn’t want one (since most people don’t) so i asked her for one.
i didn’t stop to look at her reaction. i just placed the piece of paper in my pocket and walked on, hoping that she would feel better having been able to give away one of her fliers through means other than force.
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Posted in miscellaneous stuff at 4:18 am by admin
this is the first of what i hope will be many entries written during my extremely long commute into manhattan. it’s been a long time since i’ve posted an entry and usually my excuse for these long breaks is that i’m extremely busy. this is definitely no exception.
i’m working at tommy hilfiger now as a web developer, and so far the experience has been really incredible. the group i work for is a brand new group, with a lot of people who have only been at the company for a few months. our purpose in life is to launch several mini ecommerce sites over the course of the next year. it’s a really big deal, since tommy has never delved into online commerce before.
it’s been really fascinating to see how things work at such a brand-centric fashion company. a lot of attention is paid to how the brand is presented to the public, and a lot of the attention to this comes directly from tommy hilfiger himself. no, i have not personally met him. however, i work with people on an almost daily basis who have presented directly to him, and apparently he’s very demanding and dedicated to perfection. i learned that he personally approves every single design that the company uses, and that he’s brutally honest if he doesn’t like something.
the people i work with are really interesting and all very outgoing and pleasant. it seems that this company only brings in the best people and everyone is very driven. there’s a sense of teamwork that i’m not really familiar with. i found myself working at home until 12:30am last week several times without even minding because i’m enjoying what i’m doing, which is fantastic for me since it’s such a polar opposite from how i felt about my old job.
i’m wearing lots of tommy now because of the discount, and it’s been great to reinvent myself fashion-wise since i was so sick of those damned polos and khaki pants. my job allows me to dress casually, but i’ve been trying to dress at least a little nicely since i’m still the “new guy”. i’ve been wearing brightly colored tommy button-down shirts and cargo pants most days and it’s been nice to get to wear different stuff.
* * *
i had forgotten how interesting it was to work in manhattan. i was nervous about coming back since i haven’t worked here since just a few months after 9/11. that was a very rough time for me, taking the subway and seeing all the photocopied “missing” pictures of people that were plastered all over the stations. every single day was emotionally exhausting and there was such a different feeling than before — this cloud of nervousness, dread and pain that was everywhere.
now that i’m back, i’m beginning to see a lot of what i remember from before 9/11. the people are back to their crazy selves. there’s always so much to see — whether it’s a man in a sequined costume playing the oboe in the subway, a crowd of japanese tourists living their lives out through the viewfinder of a digital camera, or incredibly fashionable sexually ambiguous businessmen rushing to make it to the office.
a lot of people talk about new york like it’s a lonely place where you’re surrounded by millions of people but always feel isolated. i don’t find this to be true at all. it’s true that i don’t talk to every random stranger that i see on the street, but such is life. i wouldn’t do that in the mall in humble either. however, what i’ve noticed more than ever about new york is that because you’re surrounded by so many people, you’re very likely to see something familiar in the face of a stranger.
i very often see people who look familiar to me, and it’s my theory that there are only so many faces in the world — only so many combinations of eyes, mouths and noses. with 8 million people around you, the chance of seeing one of those familiar combinations is pretty likely.
“hey, did michael leyton just walk past macy’s? was that mrs. hayhurst tap-dancing for money on 7th avenue?”
i feel a lot of things in new york, but lonely is certainly not one of them.
* * *
taking the train to work is a very different experience from driving. my commute every day is 90 minutes each way on the train, meaning that i spend 3 hours of my day on a nj transit train.
i live in boonton, which is a strange little suburban town in morris county, nj. morris county is the county where washington’s headquarters were located during the revolutionary war, and the whole area is still very colonial.
i hop on the train from the station that’s about half a mile from my house and basically see most of new jersey from my rounded rectangular window. what is so interesting to me is that i don’t get to the part of new jersey that most people think of until i’m only about 20 minutes away from new york city.
people go to new york on vacation, look over the hudson river and see the most industrial part of new jersey and think that that’s all there is. what most people don’t realize is that a ton of the produce they’re eating is probably from new jersey, and it’s not necessarily radioactive.
new jersey is full of farms, a lot of greenery, and small colonial towns with houses that are hundreds of years old. there’s a lot more to the state than what you can see over the river.
i urge people to take the train ride i take each morning and maybe their perceptions will change. (mind you, there are plenty of things i hate about new jersey, such as the traffic, the ridiculous population density in some areas, and the irritating obsession with bruce springsteen and bon jovi, but that’s another issue entirely.)
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