It's an insult to my income not to enjoy New York

I was just rereading some of my old posts and saw something key. I wrote that I like being an outsider in a city. I think I need to amend that statement. What I should of said is I like looking at where I live as an outsider. Sometimes you really do have to leave what you know to remember to appreciate what you have. I spent the last week in California -- reporting in Sacramento, visiting a grammar school friend in Oceanside then college friends (one of whom I haven't seen for more than a year, it was great) in LA -- and remember what it was like to look at a city with fresh eyes. You get back that sense of energy and desire to explore that you loose after being in any one place for a while; you begin to become stagnant. Being out in California made me want to return to New York and look around with the same sense of curiosity I did that first summer I was here -- not even as an intern, but when I was out visiting before that. I live in New York City, dammit. This city is never stagnant; it's the person who becomes so. This city is full of accents and foods, shops and cultures, people and music and everything else you can think of. For me to not take advantage of this is a sort of insult--to the creatives, the creators, and even to my wallet. I'm not paying the rent I d strictly for the ability to work in magazines out here, I'm paying to live in New York fucking City.

(picture credit: http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/7885/skylinefk4.jpg)

At the same time though, being a working adult in new york is no different than anywhere else. in fact, it's probably more intense and more demanding, if I can say so without sounding like a pretentious ass. I definitely have friends in Chicago who work just as hard, put in just as many hours, and have done/are doing just as much bitch work as a new yorker in order to get where they want to be, and those are the friends who I know would have no problem surviving in the corporate world out here. I really can't say about my education friends, as I have no idea what the demands of their jobs are like. But back to the point: there comes a point where New York is just the city you live in. Just another place you buy toilet paper and do your dishes when the sink gets full and go out to bars and see shows when you're not working your 9-5, or something there about. Is that my excuse for being a "lazy" new yorker? Am I lazy, or has this city just become home? I still get a thrill out of picking out locations in new york movies that only someone who's live here would know. And isn't that just like being proud of being able to say "I've tried to climb the tower of cars in Wayne's World. Yeah, that thing is sitting is a suburban strip mall parking lot," right?