On My Neighborhood

Note: This piece was written on November 19, 2024

I’ve been walking to and from work each day for the past few weeks. It’s about two and a half miles one way through Central Park, and 6am - 9am is off-leash hours for neighborhood dogs. You’ll see dogs off leash all day in the grassy areas, but during these hours the dogs are allowed to go anywhere untethered. It’s amazing how well-behaved they are and how much joy they have in the freedom to run around. It brings me a little joy and gratitude first thing in the morning that I get to live where I do.

I started walking my commute instead of taking the subway sporadically more than a year ago. I was at a different company then, about five miles from my home, and I would walk back uptown at the end of the day a few times a week if it wasn’t painfully cold or pouring rain. Now, with this position being closer to home, I started walking at the end of the day occasionally to accommodate phone calls with friends. This month that has turned into a roundtrip commute on foot.

I’ve tried especially to make the park trek in the mornings since the time change because otherwise I get no exposure to sunlight. I’m at my desk all day with very little break and it makes a girl even more depressed than she’s chemically predisposed to be. So I spend an hour walking through the park watching all the dogs trot along with their sticks or their toys, making friend with other furballs who are so inclined to play.

I am prone to rumination, where your mind focuses in on something not-so-positive and gets stuck on it. Many times for me it’s a situation in the past that can’t be changed, or a hope for the future that can’t be controlled or acted upon because it involves outside forces and participants. To curtail this broken record of impossibilities I have been listening to audiobooks while I walk.

I did this a lot during the pandemic, another period in which I spent a large portion of my day outside on my feet. Most audiobooks are between four and ten hours long and I listen on double speed, so I’m going through an extra one or two books a week (sometimes one full book in a day). Right now I’m listening to Platonic by Marisa G. Franco, which is her study on friendship and how it looks in Western society, as well as her own advice on how to build more meaningful long-term relationships with people who are not our romantic partners.

I’ve thought about asking neighborhood friends to join me on my morning walks, but I’ve only made one friend in the area thus far in the year-plus that I’ve lived in my apartment. I desperately hope I will be staying in this neighborhood when my lease is up, but New York real estate is a fickle mistress and I have no reassurance on location when it comes time to pack up again. 

The uncertainty absolutely affects my relationship building efforts, both with people and with place. I cannot bring myself to become a regular at a coffee shop or a bar if I’m just going to leave in a few months. I want Central Park to continue being my backyard, my beautiful commute, but the possibility of leaving makes me want to withdraw a bit. All I can count on is uncertainty which also makes friendship hard to maintain. If only I were a dog who didn’t care, free to run every morning in the park and cycle between playmates without a real care.