Comfort Zone

Looking around my room now, it's clear that an agorophobic lives here. But for me, agorophobia is more a form of laziness; I have never outgrown dorm years where everything circled outside my door. I love Brooklyn, but go there barely twice a month; these days just leaving Hell's Kitchen is a challenge. I've gone through periods like this before, and I think they're inherently part of being a writer--and inherently responsible for some very over decorated bedroooms. Seriously, it's starting to resemble a teenager's room, with posters and scribblings and Christmas lights. Even I'm starting to feel it's becoming a little...theatrical...

Because that's all I seem to be doing now--nesting, redecorating, rearranging. The challenge is to do it without spending any money, a challenge that I'm finding incredibly irritating in my thirties and as my tastes get more expensive. In between nesting, I write articles I've promised people, I edit Wicked Women, I go to the gym and I walk dogs. The gym is in my building; the dogs are on my block. I leave only on weekends, and am starting to feel like those old ladies with small dogs. In fact, I think I'm starting to overdress just like them, only instead of wearing a head-to-toe lavender Chanel and walking a King Charles Spaniel, I'm in head-to-toe black H&M and walking a finicky Daschund. It's all a little terrifying.

I do have a life on weekends, when I get blind drunk with my girlfriends at literary readings and flirt with shamefully with very talented authors. But for the most part, the internet and the phone and television connect me to the world outside my high-rise. And within the high-rise there are friendly, gossipy doormen and a fair number of good-looking yuppies for me to have half-hearted crushes on. There's neighbor's mail to be collected and bonding to be done in the gym, cats to feed, and endless, endless, endless laundry, and lots of dogs and babies to fuss over. I have created a miniature Manhattan, all at one address, 52 stories high.

I'm not sure that's particularly healthy, but what writer is?