I moved to Manhattan in 1991 for business school and couldn’t wait to escape the suburbia of my childhood. The city was the utopia of my dreams, offering me anonymity, opportunity, and variety. It was pure magic. (So why does someone who values her anonymity fairly openly and candidly blog her life? This is a contradiction I cannot explain).

It was a miracle I ever left. In fact for 10 years I rarely left the island of Manhattan, then through the years, rarely went beyond the plot of land south of Houston and north of Wall. But leave I did, for 3 years in Tokyo.

Now I am back and the city is different… and the same, just a bit too familiar. I have been here two months and somehow that original excitement is gone for me. My question is: will it be magic again?

View from my old apartment in Tribeca where I lived for 8 years.