Someone stole my laptop charger yesterday. In an unusual twist of dramatic ambience, I was literally powerless.

What an apt metaphor for my first three weeks in New York.

I’ve been making it mostly on luck, some savings, the goodwill of others, and an easy smile.

Every path I explore leads to a door I cannot open, or a chasm I cannot cross.

(Except for one, of course. The academic path is unfurling like a fern in the autumn).

I see network enmeshed in network, none of which I am a part.

The irony was when a woman on the phone told me that with my “experience” I could command scant more than a $12 dollar salary, and told me to take “Eagle Scout” off the top of my resume because it “didn’t belong there.”

I chuckle and shrug it off.

I relate to money like a middle-schooler now. Determined not to have to rely on my family–or anyone–for money, I’m minding my dollars with the attentiveness of a 6th grader with a ten-dollar allowance.

But money is starting to trickle in.

I’m having the time of my life.

Today I spent 90 minutes having essentially a “private lesson” with the chair of NYU’s management department. She told me that we covered in 90 minutes what a classroom of PhD students would take three hours. I feel proud.

I am working my way around the city. Slowly, I’m building relationships. These are not things I can rush. I’m trying to make this real.

I’m volunteering at an event. That’s where my charger got stolen. I’m volunteering, and I get my stuff taken. How poignant.  But I can’t let it phase me. My laptop dies; I don’t have a spare. Is there a metaphor in there?

No matter. Everything is going to work out spectacularly. A little patience; no need to rush.

The energy of this place is incredible.