Well, I just sent my article to The Frisky editor. Met the deadline, but went over the word limit by 300ish. It couldn’t be helped! I’m proud of the piece though, if not a little nervous that it’s out of my control now. Mostly, I’m so glad it’s done.

I’m seeing my best friend from college tonight for the first time in long while. He still lives in New York, but we’ve drfted apart over the years. It’s funny timing to be catching up with him because so much of the article I just finished obsessing over for two days deals with the past and a time during which he and I were very close. So it’s all very fresh in my mind.

I realized this morning that this month marks 12 years since I moved to New York as a teenager. Yes, I came for college, but college in New York is a whole different animal than a dorm-room style experience in a non-urban environment. Certainly not better or worse, but very different.

The friend I’m seeing tonight is someone I met on my second or third day in town. We connected because he was also from the Midwest – from a Chicago suburb no less. And we clung to each other for those first few months, becoming best friends and partners in food crime and other nonsense. He’s also the friend whose eventual weight loss inspired me to get serious about my own. In short, we were tumultuous besties for years before we ultimately drifted apart.

I’m excited to see him, to reminisce about how we used to stay up late in our dingy railroad apartment and talk about “when we’re 30.” Here we are.

When I moved to this city at age 17, I was such a naive idiot. I really was. I guess most 17-year-olds are. I could not have known at the time, of course, what a ridiculous, trying and colorful course my twenties would take. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to realize I’m standing on the otherside of that insanity.