# Borrowed Time

*On motion, and building belonging out of impermanence*

By [Debbie Soon](https://paragraph.com/@debbie) · 2025-11-08

essay, personal, moving, belonging

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Six months ago, I started a new job based in New York City. On my first morning walking to the office at Union Square, I passed a parked truck covered in graffiti. Scrawled across it were the words: _“I’m aiming so high I keep forgetting that I’m already living my dream.”_

I stopped to take a photo.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/ba23f7380ac7fc57f7748838ba1371926ffca7b1dffcf80e6ff22a30b3f554d3.jpg)

I had spent the past four years building a new life in America — founding and exiting a business, publishing a book — and yet there I was, hesitant about starting over, meeting new people, and not entirely sure what I’d signed up for.

It turned out the truck wasn’t random at all. It was a piece by local artist [Benny Cruz](https://instagram.com/bennycruz), whose handwritten phrases read like love letters to this city:

_“She has a soft heart, but is New York tough.”_

_“I’'ve been everywhere, but my heart is still in New York.”_

_“It’s not about what you can learn about New York, but what New York can teach you about yourself.”_

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/dfc8eaa8ebdca21697f886277d231e6ae19d050044df7f3102bc230ecfd64448.png)

Art by [Benny Cruz](https://instagram.com/bennycruz)

Since then, I’ve bounced between New York, Miami, and countless cities for work... so often that half my coworkers assumed I already lived here.

In reality, I only “_permanently_” relocated less than a month ago. I use the word loosely. Since the pandemic, every move I’ve made has been on borrowed time: the first 120 days on a tourist visa – split by a visa run to Costa Rica – then three years on a different kind of visa renewed through hoops and legal fees. Along the way, I’ve moved apartments four times and states twice.

It would be pure folly to believe in permanence in a country where I am, by definition, an _alien_.

Yet somehow, I keep making homes. Over and over. In an age where digital nomadism is celebrated, I am anything but.

As spontaneous as I am, I crave routine. And as much as I long for deep connection, I love what sociologists call _weak ties_ — those low-stakes interactions with the barista or grocery store cashier whose name you never ask for. It turns out these small exchanges create a sense of belonging, no matter how temporary.

So whenever I move, I pour myself into creating a space I love spending every waking minute in. It’s a toxic and expensive trait. I love a project. I love to decorate. Above all, I love curating. I love _creating_.

An empty apartment to me is a blank canvas to a painter; an empty page to a writer; a movie waiting not just to be screened, but to be cast and produced.

Just yesterday, I went to [The Other Art Fair](https://www.theotherartfair.com/brooklyn/) and came home with three new pieces, and in a way, three new _weak ties._ Each one a small, lasting connection to the artists behind them, as long as their work lives on my walls.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/aacb08d13d132a23c2760c615a7a6ecb9f9de66415b9d4a3771470e42c934575.jpg)

(This photo is cheating, because I already own Efdot's work and did not buy a new piece last night 😝)

Even then, I don't feel like I'm done. I’m determined to leave no wall uncovered. Call it my maximalist era. If I can’t control how long I stay, I can at least decide what it looks like while I’m here.

So here we are. In less than 30 days, and despite unironically spending a third of them on the road, this space has already started to transform.

Next week, I’ll be opening my home to half a dozen people over a game of poker, maybe more. Somehow, I’ve found an uncharacteristic New York apartment: a private backyard still overgrown with weeds and potential, and a basement the size of most people’s entire homes.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/7fce365e71b15357a72a196bfa987e53f51484e4d4c45ee492564052b1999939.jpg)

Yet it’s already starting to feel like mine.

The walls are no longer bare; they carry the scuffs and uneven patches from my inept DIY skills – hammering nails into drywall, missing the mark, then patching over the evidence like nothing happened. Every corner holds a piece of furniture I painstakingly assembled myself with an Allen key and a Phillips screwdriver.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/6819216ae5bb2d31584fd2fdc7b58041ccc7a6c507730e292e2c7e7893e18a1f.png)

Memories here are sparse, but not for long.

"_New York is the end of your past and a place of rebirth_," was what Benny Cruz wrote on the other side of that truck.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/4efc512f34056b8b80de6ec8441a0573d06fe8f302a9a42fd23d8314ad8815d7.jpg)

There’s something about this city that makes you believe in second chances. And indeed, this is my second go-around. The last time I lived here, I was a broke graduate student. I collected abandoned furniture off the sidewalk, survived off $2 Yuenglings at the neighborhood dive bar, and somehow found myself on every promoter list in the city to afford a night out.

When I decided to return, I thought to myself: here we go – starting over, all over again. Perhaps I am simply just continuing, picking up the thread of who I’ve always been and weaving it into something new.

Soon there will be music in the basement, people spilling out into the backyard, stories crossing languages and timelines. The weeds will thin out, the art will shift, and maybe I’ll move again.

But for now, this is exactly where I need to be.

For now, I am living my dream, even if I keep forgetting.

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*Originally published on [Debbie Soon](https://paragraph.com/@debbie/borrowed-time)*