NYC | Island & Hills

November 11, 2015 / 2 Comments

Tinder Ambiguity

A couple nights ago, I went to dinner with one of my closest friends in the city. Over a couple of amazing cocktails, we swapped stories of our current dating highs and lows. I shared my most recent dilemma with her: when meeting people through apps (especially on Tinder), it is really hard to know what someone is looking for. Rarely is it ever explicitly stated in a person’s profile, which makes every first date feel like some sort of psychological study; while chatting about our backgrounds, interests and lives in New York, I am constantly pulling for subtext. If he mentions an old girlfriend, does that mean he wants something more serious? If he picks a spot three blocks from his apartment, does that mean he’s only interested in the Netflix and chill part of the evening?

To be clear, I’m not looking for any sort of serious relationship right now, but I’m also not interested in a casual, one-time fling. I want to get to know someone to the point where I feel like I can trust them before anything physical happens; that’s just how I roll.

Sharing these thoughts with my friend, we realized we were in the same boat and came up with an interesting experiment. Rather than continuing to navigate this grey area, we decided to cut to the chase and see what happened. We each pulled out our phones, logged onto our respective apps (Bumble for her, Tinder for me), and typed the following to our most recent connections:

“Out of curiosity, what are you looking for on [name of app]?”

I blindly swiped right on at least twenty guys and asked them all the same question (maybe this will affect my Tinder karma… can someone tell me if Tinder karma exists and, if so, will I lose Super Likes because of this?)

September 29, 2015 / 0 Comments

Confessions of a Closeted Romantic

I spent last weekend in Colorado attending a celebration of my late grandma’s life. One of the best parts about this weekend-long event was being able to discover even more about my grandparents through stories and memorabilia. One particular instance that stands out in my mind: my grandpa used to write my grandma beautiful love letters over the years (many of which were saved and I had the great fortune of reading). These weren’t your average “u complete me” high school love notes; they were “The Notebook” level confessions of love.

Now a lot of my close friends probably read the title of this post and thought in an exasperated voice “Closeted romantic? YEAH, OKAY.” *insert eye roll here*. My friend Hallie always jokes that I’m going to meet my soulmate while carrying bags of groceries; the bottoms of the bags will give out all at once, and as I frantically try to pick up the contents, a dashing man will come to my aid. The rest is history *cue wedding bells*.

Whenever I hear her talk about this scenario, I give a laugh, respond with a wistful “yeah, wouldn’t that be nice?” and then we move on. The truth is, that thought lingers in my head much longer than I am ever willing to admit — that is, until now.

September 15, 2015 / 0 Comments

How to Host

If you live in a big city, you have likely held the position of “host” at some point or another. Whether it be friends or family, hosting can feel stressful; the unspoken expectation is that you serve as your city’s unofficial ambassador of fun. You’ve lived here for six months now, what do you mean you don’t know the best place to get Turkish food on a Wednesday? (Hold on, let me check Yelp…)

All this aside, if you love and care about the people that you’re hosting, you genuinely want to show them a good time. This past weekend I hosted one of my best friends from college, Colleen, for a quick 24-hour trip; here are the things I learned from her stay (along with the several other hosting duties I’ve had during my time in New York):

September 9, 2015 / 1 Comment

Fall Favorites: NYC

As a habitual planner and goal setter, one season ending and another beginning sends me into a spiral of reflection and thought. I’m the sort of person who wholeheartedly embraces January 1st and the ritual of making new years resolutions, often documenting them visually.

So of course, with all the “so long summer” Instagrams and back-to-school promos, the thoughts started flooding my mind: What do I want to make of my fall? What sort of goals should I set? What have I been wanting to do but putting off?

I am always performing a balancing act between present and planning. While I love making plans, I also have to constantly remind myself to enjoy what I have in the present moment. So I’ve reframed my questions; rather than focusing on the big picture life changes the moment the days start getting shorter, I thought about the beautiful, simple things I love about the fall season. Here is what I came up with:

August 31, 2015 / 0 Comments

Untitled, Undefined

“Where are you from?”

A common question we get asked that I often have a hard time answering. My response is always pretty long winded: I grew up in Texas, my family resides in Las Vegas now, I went to school in DC, and now I live in New York City. Sometimes this will lead to a follow up question of “so where is home for you?” And to be honest, I still haven’t figured it out. New York feels like the obvious choice, but I usually resort to an open-ended “Well home for me isn’t linked so much to places, but more to feelings, emotions and memories. Home is my mom’s cooking. It’s my herb garden. It’s my best friends from college. It’s breakfast tacos.” It can’t be defined in a clear cut, obvious way.

In a similar sense, another hard-to-answer question we often face: “So what’s the deal with you and [insert fling/hook up buddy/romantic interests name here]?”

August 6, 2015 / 0 Comments

I & H Spotlight: Kendall Breitman

With the first presidential debate happening tonight, we couldn’t imagine a better spotlight subject than Kendall Breitman. Kendall, 23, currently works as a political reporter in New York City.

Maddie: Tell me what you do.
Kendall: I’m a political reporter at Bloomberg Politics.

M: What made you want to get into journalism and reporting?
K: I didn’t originally think about doing journalism at all. I always liked writing, but I didn’t want to do creative writing, so I didn’t really know what else was on the table. I took a journalism class, and that opened up the whole world of journalism to me. I started editing arts and entertainment for my school’s newspaper (I thought that was what I wanted to do). I got an internship doing political journalism, ended up loving that, so it all came together out of different situations in my life.