This aint no lump of coal...

How I came to New York is a bit of a peculiar story… As inevitable as it was I definitely took an odd route. I really do believe that I was meant to live here for at least a good portion of my life, but I was not totally doe eyed about the experience either. I knew that coming to NYC (and staying) would be hard and require a level of determination that I hadn’t experienced previously.

The idea was put into my head that I could survive here, or any other big city, on Christmas day. I was in a bar, drinking with my brother and his best friend. At the end of the table they introduced me to his sister, Steph. Steph was a little different. I could tell immediately. Maybe it was her really cool cell phone, the Razr, which at the time only drug dealers or techies were using back in Lancaster. There was something that I was drawn to but I really doubt it was her cell phone.

She was visiting from New York for Christmas and had brought a friend along but once we started talking we completely ignored everyone else at the table. It was like meeting someone I had known all my life for the first time. It was strange, I was able to open up to her completely. It started because we spoke about music and quickly moved on from there.

Steph, as I have come to find out, has a directness about her that helps to guide others. Which makes sense - she manages musicians for a living, notorious for being misguided and lacking direction of their own.

The conversation changed quickly to what I was doing, what I wanted to be doing, and where I wanted to do it. She spoke of the glory of the big city, the opportunities there in comparison to where we were from. I understood and grasped it immediately. She asked what I was doing wasting my time in Lancaster in that dead end job, working for someone else.

I wasn’t sure myself, and told her as much. She filled my head with ideas, saying that if I went to school in Chicago or NY that she could help get me an internship in music or business, that she saw a smart and determined individual in me, different from a lot of the people that are willing to settle in life. That I wasn’t going to be happy accepting the lot in life that I had placed for myself so far…