Time in the Big Apple.

So I'm applying to be a flight attendant and I missed my flight back to Salt Lake today. Only I could be so amazingly stupid.

I sort of misjudged how long it would take me to get to JFK airport from lower Manhattan. You have to take the subway for about and hour and then the airtrain and to make a long story short I arrived at the airport about 20 minutes before my flight left, and you have to be there 30 minutes early for them to allow you to board.

Hell.

I'll be flying back tomorrow at 1 PM. One more night in New York...

I'm staying here with my friend Chris. I met Chris the summer after my freshman year at a program sponsored by the San Jose Mercury News for aspiring young journalists. It was called Mosaic: The Urban Journalism Workshop and it was targetted to "ethnic" kids (Chris is Mexican, though not stereotypically so...think Ugly Betty as a gay guy who writes plays) from the south bay to give them a leg up in the industry (in very bay area fashion). Well, somehow I (perhaps the whitest kid at my high school) made it into this program only to become aware of the whole "ethnic" thing once I was there. But whatever, different people were nothing new and I was all excited to be a hip young journalist. Also, gay is kind of liking having an ethnicity, right?

Anyhow, at Mosaic I had a change of heart about my future career and decided I would never, ever write for a newspaper other than the one at my high school. I also made some friends, and of those friends I kept in touch the most (through phone and chat and emails) with Chris, who was really nice to me and who I knew was gay. I came out to him a little while after the program. He was probably one of the first people, if not the first ever, that I told about being gay.

So nearly seven years later, I see Chris again for the first time in New York. He's basically the same, but I'm not. I was this really chipper, go-get-'em, enthusiastic (yet exceedingly self-conscious) young kid back at that program and I'm just not anymore. Or at least I'm not right now. I tried to recreate my high school persona for Chris' sake, but it just didn't work and I feel weird here. Chris goes to NYU and has all these brilliant playwright friends who write for Broadway and have all these incredible connections with the rich and famous, and I really just don't feel like I fit in at all. They sit around and talk about terribly smart things and go see each others' plays and discuss people and things I've never heard about and then go drinking every night. I do not belong here.

So, New York has been fun and miserable at the same time. I'm thinking I should have just checked into a hostel. I always love hostels.

I saw the Little Mermaid on Broadway and I have to admitt that was fun. I saw another play written by some kid at NYU and that was interesting. I walked through Times Square and saw the Statue of Liberty from the coast of Manhattan and walked by Ground Zero and hung out at some bars with all the NYU kids.

My interview on Friday morning went really well I think. I felt totally "New York" the morning of; taking the subway and then walking through Queens with my business suit on, Dunkin Donuts breakfast and hot chocolate in hand. I went through two long group interviews, sat through some presentations, got my fingerprints done, did a drug test, proved that I could reach everything and fit into an airplane and chatted with some potential future coworkers.

You know when you leave a test feeling like you totally kicked ass? And you say to yourself, "Man, I totally kicked ass!" Thats was me after my interview. But that in itself isn't necessarily good because half the time I feel like that, I wind up with a C+ on something. So I'm just trying not to think about it until I know. I won't find out for sure until Monday.

If I make it, the company does an extensive background check on me and then I go to training in Orlando, Florida on November 28th for 3 to 4 weeks.

I just hope no one on the hiring team finds out that I missed my flight today.