It BeginsWritten on February 25, 2026 by ΞVΞ🦋
Categories: Journal
Today was the standard day. I got up, worked, and got out of work. Same cycle, different day. It is still gray outside from the “snow storm” that just turned out to be a bunch of gray clouds and drizzle. I am still in Virginia, staying with my Mom temporarily, and not in New York, after the big breakup with the boyfriend. Which is kind of good because I don’t have to deal with the huge blizzard it’s dealing with now. I was in the big New York blizzard of 1996 and 2016, so it’s good dodging this one for a change. I like snow, but only on the first day and maybe the second day. But after that, it’s just in the way. I had never given it any thought, but the news the other day pointed out that NY has had a big blizzard every 10 years in every year that has ended with a “6”. So a 2026 blizzard is right on time.
That said, tomorrow I begin the turmoil of looking for a new apartment and starting over my life again. All my things are in storage in NY, but I’m 400 miles away in VA, and it’s really starting to bother me. Everything I own is there, my school is there, and I want to finish getting my degree, my job is there, but I work remotely, and I’m in VA with only a week’s worth of clothes, my laptop, and my cats. It really takes a hit to your ego. Especially when my job bought me premium seating tickets to a Nets game, but I likely won’t be able to go.
I’ve been living in the Bronx for the last 3.5 years, but I want to move back to Brooklyn. However, the prices for rent have skyrocketed again. When I got my first 1-bedroom apartment by myself in Sunset Park in 2020, the rent was $1800 a month; now, something of the same size I had before is going for at least $2000 unless I find some kind of deal. As an information technologist working in NY, I make the money, but I don’t want to spend that kind of money. I’d like something in the $1600-$1800 range so I can stay there for at least 5 years before getting priced out. But finding something like that is a unicorn unless I get a basement apartment. Even NY Connect apartments aren’t that cheap. But basement apartments are cheap because you will die in them. There’s a chance of being taken out of this world by drowning because they’re prone to flooding. Many basement apartments are illegal, but it happens to some poor souls living in basement apartments every year when the streets flood from heavy rain and clogged drains. The tenants drown, and the landlords just rent the shit back out to somebody else. THAT should be illegal.
I haven’t had to go apartment hunting in NY since 2020, and I’m already exhausted just thinking of the process. Nevermind all the commuting and paying ~$200 a night for a hotel; it’s the prices. The first time I moved to NY, I had the luck of surviving the homeless shelter system and a hostel in Queens for $30 a night, but now that I’m a NY resident, they’re not going to let me get a bunk there. The scammers. The assholes. The people who just flat out waste your time. The greedy brokers. The lying landlords. The discrimination. Fighting the urge to yoke the landlord up for discrimination right on the spot. It is illegal to discriminate based on race, but we all know they do it anyway; all they have to do is try not to get caught. It is very hard to find an apartment in NY as a Black person because a lot of people, including Africans, Black people from the Caribbean and Black Latinos, don’t want American Black people on their property or even in their neighborhoods, and they will decline your application expeditiously.
Then on top of that, renting a U-Haul to move all my stuff, sitting in two storage places, one in the Bronx and the other in Brooklyn. Possibly in the dead of winter, it just makes my head swirl. The good news is that landlords have a hard time finding renters in the winter, because no one moves in the cold and snow. So maybe I can use that to my advantage.
That said, I just got myself some McDonald’s. I’m going to evoke my NY state of mind, suck it up, and start apartment hunting.
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