Have you heard of Kelly Cutrone? She's this chick who runs a successful PR agency in NYC. Been on some reality TV, comes off as a real tough talking bitch. She wrote a book about navigating through life as a woman. And I swear I cried at the end looking at the picture of her daughter, whom I assume she wrote the book for.
It's actually a pretty sweet little read. Her life has been insane. She moved to NYC when she was like 12. Okay, maybe 17 or something. She talked about drug abuse and the "good life" filled with money and prestige and celebrities. And now she's middle aged, wears a sloppy black T-shirt and jeans to work every day and doesn't give a fuck. She's in the business, I think, because it's one she knows well and she likes being a business owner. It's not to preen and kiss celebrity ass and feel important because she hobnobs with people on the cover of rags like People and UsWeekly.
I'm digressing. In the book she talks about finding your "tribe." The assumption being that you aren't necessarily going to find it in your hometown, you shouldn't be afraid to look elsewhere and if you are in a foreign place a big focus should be finding a group of people you fit in with, who will be down for you no matter what. I like this idea. I advocate it wholeheartedly. And I think about moving back to Ann Arbor in conjunction with tribal camraderie.
I think about my little cousin Beth, who lives in NYC in pursuit of a career in big magazine fashion editing, and her tribe. Her tribe is definitely in New York. She met a girl there right away who became an instant best friend, they had so much in common. And they're still best friends. Her new bestie introduced her to more girls like them and in working the PR fashion mag circuit, she met even more women like herself. She found her tribe all right.
My other cousin, Crystal, came to New York a political radical, a little bit of a hippie. She joined an anarchist group and became a therapist for a non-profit organization that fights human trafficking. Through her extracurriculars and job, she found her tribe.
I moved there with no specific goal in mind but to finish college. I had no specific career goals, I had no idea who I was, I had no friends my age and the job I had was with people who were all older than I, resigned to the menial low paying tasks they signed up for. Whereas I saw the gig as merely a stepping stone. But, a stepping stone to where? I didn't know. I couldn't have gotten an internship that helped me find a degree-centered job because I was working full time anyway. I wasn't particularly qualified for anything, really. Slowly, but surely my resume morphed from "office experience" to "writing and editing" but still, I wasn't sure how to parley this into more work. There was a job placement agency a girl I knew used to get her job and I guess I could have hit them up, but by the time I quit Reuters and wanted to freelance full time, I'd been living in New York for five years and was so burned out. So, very, very burned out.
Where the fuck was my tribe? It wasn't there. Plain and simple. I never met a group of people that were really like me. I'd met people I liked more than others and no one that I would say I openly disliked, but yet, no one that really fit me or vice versa. There was always something I found strange and a little "off" about the people who crossed my path. And maybe I was being overly judgmental. Maybe I should have given more people a chance. Maybe.
But, this is the thing. I was so spoiled in my upbringing. I'm not talking about I had a lot of toys and money and vacations to Hawaii. I'm talking I had insanely intelligent friends. People who are now, for the most part, doctors, attorneys, life/spiritual coaches and holders of MBAs and PhDs. That's a tough act to follow, even for New York.
Because, this is the other thing: In New York there is a population of 8 million people. And trying to find a tribe that compares to what you're used to in terms of intellect mixed with that Midwest "aww shucks" vibe is damn near impossible. Clearly, there are tons of artists and highly educated people in New York. But, it's almost not even worth it if you're going to be a pretentious prick about it. I grew up in the shadow of one of the country's most loved and highly respected universities. I grew up being taught to love knowledge for knowledge's sake. I grew up to revere being erudite, even more than holding any specific degree.
And there's only one place I've ever been to whose tribe consists of the same kind of people; it happens to be my hometown.
I'm thinking that Cutrone could add some kind of note that if your tribe happens to be where you grew up, then it's quite all right to stay put, once you figure that out.
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