I live in Barcelona now. It is only for few months, but for a few months I get to live in Barcelona. To the usual question of how I’m settling in I always reply with the same sentence.
“It’s everything I’ll ever want from life."
I mean it. Barcelona is a place I can see myself spending a bigger part of my life at. It is hot, it is sunny, it is Mediterranean. “One day I’ll move there” is what I told my parents 3 years ago. Now I kind of did, although I don’t think you can fully count it like that. It’s more of a 3 month test-run before going back to New York.
And yes, I am going back to New York after these 3 months. But when reading a book on Platja de Bogatell or going out in Gracia, I do notice a subtle urge to stay. Stay … why go back to New York … as glamours and wonderful it can be, it's really not a nice place to live in and stresses me out. I could flip the switch this very moment! They even asked if I'm really going to go back to New York, if I wouldn’t want to stay and continue to work with them, with Mucho. I have all the qualifications I need to get back into a full-time job commitment. I don’t need the design school degree, I could flip the switch this very moment …
But, I’m going back to New York. Not because I have to, not because I had planned to do so, but because I want to. I want to have the time. Time to explore, to build, to play. Time to be play, because that is where the magic happens.
My 4 years at The New School are like a playground to me. A playground, protected by a fence. A place where I can let my inner child run free and stop worrying about it. Some of the toys I already know, others I’ve seen before, and a handful are completely foreign to me. But, the kid runs free and plays with them all. It runs around in circles and is okay with that, because it is a place meant to run around in circles. Is a a place meant to come up with imaginary games and live in that universe for ever and ever and ever; it stops holding onto the ever-fleeting moment of the present. This inner child is going to be called home soon enough; so for now, I push this subtle urge to stay in Barcelona to the side and will go back to New York, my playground, because that is where the magic happens.