Wowee, it’s been a minute since we all congregated here on the blog. I copped this Bluetooth keyboard to make writing easier for myself on the road and then proceeded to live in the moment while in New York City. I’m writing this, 4 days after getting back from NYC, and there is a lot that has happened in the 15 days since I last wrote.
I’m editing and updating this blog 4 days after I wrote the first draft. I’m not going to let this blog slip through the cracks.
My strategy for this blog has been to sequence my days and report on them. I think instead the blog content for the next bit will be themed and leverage the anecdotes I’ve stacked when appropriate. There is a good chance the pace of my writing will change. I’ll find a schedule I can commit to and aim to deliver 2 articles a week.
For all the best of reasons my available free time is about to change.
ChatGPT helped me find a job
On May 4th, I used ChatGPT to assist me with my job hunt. I fed it my CV and asked AI to reword it with the goal of pleasing recruiters. By May 10th,I spoke to someone on the phone for a position. By Friday May 12th, I had two virtual interviews and was told I would find out where we stood the upcoming Monday.
Between those interviews and the interview update, I made my way down to NYC with Anu Budz of MakeWay. I was aware there would be some paperwork to deal with should they make me an offer. On Monday the 15th I received an offer for a salary higher than I was making in December.
Basically, ChatGPT made me look pretty enough to get a date.
The company manages military contracts so I needed to pass a real deal security check. This required a bunch of information from me including:
Where I lived the last 7 years
Every source of income
3 references (at least one professional and one personal) who know me 5 years
My birth certificate number
Etc.
Knowing this was for a clearance I went hard on my due diligences, all from my phone, mostly cruising around Manhattan. The paperwork needed to be submitted that Wednesday and it was a whole to-do. I worked out with them what needed to be done immediately and what could wait until I got back.
The Wednesday deadline was met. I got the rest of it completed late Sunday night in Montreal.
A change is coming
I got the job but needed to wait over a week to be cleared for work.
I spent the better part of this past week tripping on whether or I would pass the clearance. I didn’t lie and I don’t have a record, but the limbo was torturous. Now we are definitively good to go and by Wednesday I am employed AF.
I’m glad I got this position. It’s a document management role, which is right in my wheelhouse. I have managed knowledge bases, podcasts, music & more. Almost everything you see with my name on it has been managed by me in some capacity. Now I will rewrite documents, making information cleaner and sometimes make instructional videos.
It is a cool opportunity. It also distracted me in New York. There is at least one interview we didn’t film because my head wasn’t in the game. Once the paperwork was filled in I was focused again. These pending big things give me more anxiety than I would like, as life evolves I learn to manage it better.
All this is exciting, but it also means that the pace of the last 5 months is over. I will have to figure out how much time work takes before I can recommit time to the rest of my projects. It’s funny how life works, you need money so you get a better job, but then you give up time. Still a good year or two of stacking dollars can’t hurt.
TL:DR on the New York Trip
Overall, the trip was successful. Our mission was to go film promo content and new PRSPCTVS episodes and we accomplished that. We were able to interview Dinco D (of Leaders of the New School), Steele (of Smif-n-Wessun), Agallah Don Bishop, & a super talented artist named Shellyne Rodriguez. Each of these episodes is loaded with knowledge and backstory that can help any artist obtain inspiration for how to move forward with their careers.
We also filmed a bunch of promo content. Between pictures and videos from all sources, there is about 140 GB of stuff to go through now. Content whore that I am, I made a stream out of sorting what we have. Now I have a bunch more work to do to turn these videos into content.
We saw a bunch of landmarks like the 9/11 Memorial Complex and Gray’s Papaya. One of our Patreon rewards is a guided tour of New York/Montreal so it makes sense to start showing off what you’d see.
One thing about travelling NYC by car is that you will spend a lot of time in traffic. We found parking easily, but traffic is unavoidable. It’s also worth noting that charging a Tesla in NYC is different than you may be used to. Chargers aren’t readily available; you need to plan around charging your car, a full charge gets you a couple of days of traffic filled driving.
Most importantly it was a fun time, anecdotes to come in future blogs.
Be prepared for New York prices
By now I am kind of used to New York prices. To the uninitiated: prepared to spend some money. Everything you can think of costs more than you are used to in Montreal.
At first I went into this trip with a frugal mentality. Don’t get me wrong I still had a good amount to spend, but then I got the job offer. That’s how I ended up dropping 400$ on a single outfit at Century 21. I probably would not have done that without the job offer.
Besides, you can always make more money, can you always get a dope fit from Century 21? Can you easily replicate those memories? I think not! Obviously this excludes any New Yorkers reading this.
If you are going to spend a week in NYC, you probably should expect to spend a good 500$ to stay alive without stressing it. This would cover your transit, food, and whatever other costs come with a trip. This does not include your Airbnb & Transport which are all relative. You can probably get away with less money, but you are 100% going to want to try food, and food is going to add up.
A single coffee is 3-5$. The Airbnb did not have a coffee machine, so it was coffee on the go.
Your trip determines how you eat
A big part of any trip is experiencing new food. I want this blog to provide practical food for thought. Here’s a tangent.
On the way back to Montreal we had a chat I feel I’ve initiated on every road trip this year. The subject is the viability of grocery store shopping for the trip. On a weekend it’s pretty doable as you can prepare everything before you leave.
Crossing a border makes this more complicated. Depending on the food you bring you may actually face some border issues. When your trip is a week or more, the pre-planned groceries from home are not going to last. I know at least one of you reading this has a whole system for this, and I’m super curious what it is.
Airbnb’s tend to come with a full kitchen area. You’ll end up with a sink, stove and at the least a microwave. The specific appliances changes from spot to spot but every Airbnb I’ve stayed in has had some way to cook food. That’s more common than towels being available, double check if they have towels before leaving.
When your trip is mission oriented and you are out and about for 12 hours at a time, the literal act of cooking becomes hard to fit into a schedule. Sure, there is money that can be saved but then you have to find the time to deal with food prep and cooking.
My best solution for healthy eating is a dedicated role on the trip to the resource manager person. Someone who deals with cooking food and finding stuff people need. Without that, fast food be king.
Plan your trip but stay agile
We had a general plan going into this trip. As we do more of these we learn better how to plan for the next one. The big lesson from this trip was how to deal with real life changes.
I got a job offer that required clearance, I had to deal with this. It’s future bread in my life I need to sustain future trips. The timing was awful but if I did not get the paperwork in, there is no job. Opportunity costs are real.
Time and energy spent dealing with that burned Tuesday evening. Whenever something disrupts a plan there is a ripple effect that effects everything.
How do you deal with the unexpected? Backup plans is a good answer. One of the weirdest positions to be in is stuck without a plan in another city feeling like your day is gone. Bonnie and I experienced this for an evening our trip in NYC.
Communication with all parties involved is also key. It’s easy to let 2-3 hours go by when you are out and about. Whether or not you make the most of your time is up to you, but trying to scramble for last minute ideas is not simple, for me.
Maybe I’m just not that impulsive. As I get older the whole guided tour thing takes on a more interesting light. Someone clearly put time and effort into making that tour, it’s probably more lit than me and Google.
That NYC hustle is infectious
Someone asked if I felt like Montreal was behind the times after I got back. The question makes sense, there is an efficiency to the way things are done in NYC we do not see often in Montreal. You see it in the traffic where, cutting someone off is expected, and not doing it makes you the asshole. You see it in how people move with purpose, it feels like everyone is down to grind their way to the next hustle.
It is a privilege to live in NYC and be a part of that rat race. It comes with a cost and if you are willing to pay that cost you are in for a great time. The density of people makes opportunity feel like it’s everywhere.
I used to think Montreal came close to that. I no longer do. Midday Manhattan puts downtown Montreal to shame with population density.
There is also more expertise everywhere. During my January trip, I was invited to a comedy show by a local vendor. He later told me the show consisted of a bunch of Comedy Central writers practicing material. You are far more likely to find a mentor who will put you onto game when there are that many people.
The people in NYC grind different. I see a version of that hustle in Toronto. People NEED to work in a more severe way, given the price of everything. To succeed means going far beyond.
Montreal needs a bit more capitalism
I’ve never let geography lottery stop me from trying to build in Montreal, but it’s also not lost on me that when you start looking for wealth, there’s less of it in Canada. Our city doesn’t have random celebrities pulling up to just hang out. When they do pull up in Montreal, it’s a big deal, like when Lil Tjay walked into Rouge the other night and people lost their shit.
I’ve talked to enough New Yorkers to know that celebrity encounters are just so regular, they don’t matter to them. While I was in New York, Chad Ashe made this interesting FB comment here he described the Quebec music scene as socialist in nature. This means the government, and their handouts, fundamentally decide what art is relevant.
By contrast, there aren’t grants in New York the way there are in Canada. If you want that 5000$ opportunity, you need to make 5000$ and spend that money. Once you learn how to make that money, making more becomes easier and the cost of music becomes mitigated via intelligent hustle.
When you mix a desire to make money with access to expertise you get something special. A group of people who can afford to pay for excellent services. To a New Yorker, a price tag is not an obstacle but a target.
I see a lot of people working real hard all around me. I think we need to focus on different goals, like how we can make money.
Travel helps you Bridge the Gap
I’ve learned new PRSPCTVS because I’ve chosen to travel. Yes, I did plug both the interview shows in a row.
Travelling has been a pivotal part of my success. I’ve seen New York City, Lahore (Pakistan), bunch of Israel, Toronto and some smaller places like Sherbrooke (Quebec). Each of these locations has done two things for me:
Showed me how other people my age live.
Showed me what I love about my home.
It’s super hard to appreciate your home until you spent a month in a country that has no cleavage. You miss cleavage less than you’d think and for those of you into eye shots, good Lord are the eye shots on point in Lahore. But culturally I’ve never been anywhere more different than Montreal than Lahore.
No matter where you are from there parts of your home you cherish. Travelling will help you learn the parts of home that matter to you.
I think this is where we’ll end this one. In the future you’ll hear how the N.A.R.S. event went, what asking strangers questions for TikTok is like and a bunch more stuff.
Until then…
Live Long and Prosper Everyone.
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