I have these crazy ideas every so often. Not too long ago, my crazy idea was to go to law school. I didn't do it. I still think about it occasionally, but the conclusion that I always come back to is that I'd have a ton of fun in law school, but that being a lawyer would really suck and I'd end up giving up halfway through repaying my student loans, which are already to much without the extra schooling.

I've had other crazy ideas that I never followed through with. One of them was to go to Columbia University, study literature and martial arts and become a bounty hunter with my friend Jillian. That one didn't pan out. But I'd love to write about it one day. (I miss Jillian. She was great. She inspired many of my crazy ideas, and has been the inspiration for the rare bits of follow-through that I find occasionally.)

The New York part stuck with me. So did the Columbia part, although I didn't end up applying (and so never attended). But I had wanted to go there, study literature and creative writing, and become an author and have fun in New York City, the only place in the world that truly terrifies the hell out of me. And I was terrified long before 9/11. Truth be told, it terrifies me in spite of 9/11. 9/11 put a face on New York for me. Made it more approachable (what an awful thing to say!), more human, more understandable, and more like a community (albeit, one that I'm not a part of). It also made it feel like it was a part of the rest of the US, which is hard to say about much of the east coast when you are surrounded by the west coast mentality every day. 9/11 led me to feel more like the west coast had ceded from the rest of the country rather than the other way around, which is how I previously had felt. And now I feel left out. And I want in.

So my latest crazy idea is a recycled one: move to NYC. I'll leave out the Columbia part this time, and the bounty hunter part. I'll still go to hear speakers at Columbia occasionally, and I'm sure I'll get a funny picture in my head upon arriving of short, chubby me chasing down some big burly New Yorker who's skipped out on his child support, and demanding that he surrender. Yeah, right.

I have never felt smaller than I do now. And this feeling of being small will only increase drastically when I reach the city. I'm overwhelmed just thinking about it all. What if? What if this is only another one of my crazy "what if's"? What if I really do find a way to pull this off? I'll surprise the hell out of myself and everyone else around me. I'm certain of that much. Even I am still speaking in hypothetical. I pose questions to myself like, "hypothetically, if I were to move to New York, where would I have my laundry done?"

So start taking bets. Will Erin make it to New York? Or will she chicken out? Or will she do both, move there, and come back in six months when she's lonely and broke and exhausted? Or will she succeed, find a job, manage to pay rent, and fall in love with a city that currently intimidates the hell out of her?