On one of my first trips to New York City, I visited the NoMad library. It made me feel drunk on interior design. I quickly developed an affection for the Big Apple, visiting several more times in my 20s. Each trip brought with it a moment of equal delirium.

A couple of years ago, after living in Hong Kong for a year and a half, I got a job offer to work in New York City. I’m a Canadian, so I drove down to Buffalo with my dad to interview for my TN status, and a day later my partner and I rented a red Nissan Rogue and we drove down to move to New York.

Here are 20 things I learned from living here for two years:

1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art spans 2.5 million square feet, spread out over 300 rooms. It has over 1.5 million items in its permanent collection. I heard a private museum tour guide say, “My clients always ask me, ‘“How am I supposed to see the whole thing?’ And I tell them, “You’re not!” This resonated with me. It feels true of visiting museums, reading books, and living in New York City. Expecting yourself to see everything is setting yourself up to fail. Finding your things feels like a much happier goal. 

(If you really wanted to see the whole Met though, you can try what this couple did—visit every weekend for seven years. If you’re interested in the Met, you’ll like Patrick Bringley’s working memoir.)

2. Visiting a city and living in it are totally different. When you visit, a city like New York feels magical. You’re getting to know it, but there’s still a lot left to the imagination. After a couple of years, you start to get to know each other better, and the magic fades away. What’s left is more precious: reality. There’s a big difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone, and the same goes for the place where you live.

3. Some words that I had to learn to pronounce: Stuyvesant sounds like STYE-viss-int. Houston sounds like HOUSE-ton. Bowery, BOW-ery. Oh, and while we’re at it. NoLiTa is an abbreviation for North of Little Italy. SoHo is South of Houston. NoMad is North of Madison Square Park. Streets go east to west. Avenues go north to south. Welcome to Manhattan.

4. I’ve mentioned my fondness for New York, so it might help to acknowledge this reality: no place in the world is perfect. Definitely not NYC. 

5. Locals love jaywalking—it is a custom. Streets are often very quiet, so you can often jaywalk very comfortably. Some people prefer to walk all the way up to the curb and bolt to the other side the second they can. I prefer slowly jaywalking, at best—and if I don’t feel like it, I don’t do it. I’ve stopped caring that everyone started crossing while I stood there. When you understand a place’s customs, you earn the right to make rules for yourself.

6. If you pay attention, you can hear the most interesting conversations. Three middle-aged guys eating the pizza special doing a deal about vintage collectible comic books. A younger guy and a girl making an extensive list of the autographs they’ve collected, plans for the next ones, and gossiping about how a celebrity’s bodyguard roughed one of their friends up.

7. I grew up in Canada and I didn’t like autumn at all. It usually meant impending winter, school, and despair. In New York, autumn means fashion, a reprieve from hot summers, and nice fall colors. Living here made me consider autumn with a fresh perspective. It’s also generally a nice reminder to reconsider the other opinions I’d held on to that I was ready to let go of.

8. It’s noisy here. Some people carry boomboxes with them to play their music. If you feel the need to express yourself—to share whatever you’re listening to with the world—this is the place to do it. What I took from this: Be proud of what you’re listening to, and share it with the world. In fact—be proud of who you are. When I visited Jim O’Shaughnessy, his parting words to me were, “Remember Herbert, you eat the city or the city eats you!”

9. My dry cleaner is nearing retirement age. When you walk into his store, you’ll see a grayscale photo of him as a young man, with a sewing machine. That’s someone who takes their craft seriously. New York City is full of people like this. (In fairness, so is Hong Kong!)

10. The first time I visited the Met, it was on a Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t ready. Line after line, crowd after crowd—I couldn’t handle it. I vowed to my partner that it would be my last time going to the Met. What a stupid museum. Of course, the next week, we went back—early in the morning—and we loved it. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve gone. I spent a Friday off work looking at Lee Krasner’s Rising Green for a couple of hours. The Met has become one of my favorite parts about living here. I’m glad I kept an open mind and didn’t let my ego get the best of me—but I made a note to be less belligerent when I get tired. I visited a few weeks ago—another Saturday afternoon—and I found the crowds strangely soothing. I came across the a band playing jazz in the American Wing (and later found out it was the AAPI Jazz Collective).

11. Free lunches totally exist! And when someone gives you one, share your luck. You’ll feel even better.

12. If you’re going to spend all day on your phone, you might as well pay your rent or mortgage somewhere else.

13. A lot of people who live here can’t actually afford to live here. If you’re paying your own way, you deserve to feel extra proud of yourself. 

14. Nobody moves to New York City by accident, and nobody stays here if they don’t have a good reason to. We decided to leave our hometowns and move to this difficult place for reasons that are important to us. If you don’t want to be here, you’re not. If you want to be here, you’re going to find a way. In the meantime, you should visit. “New York wouldn’t be the same without you,” a poet wrote in chalk on the sidewalk in the Flatiron District. It’s true.  Who knows—a career is long, some say, and so is life. You might make your move a decade later.

15. Sometimes the best way to appreciate your hometown more is to leave. One of my friends who did grow up in Brooklyn doesn’t care much for it, and wouldn’t mind leaving. That’s the same way I felt about my hometown. Sometimes, I wish I had moved here earlier. But life doesn’t work like that. If I grew up here, it might not feel that special for me to live here. 

16. The saying goes, “Happiness is only real when shared.” While I don’t agree with it entirely, shared experiences enhance NYC. It’s a big city, and it can get lonely. I feel really grateful I moved here with my partner (we got married two months after our move!) and our cat. We’ve shared the experience. If you want to move here solo, you should totally do it—just make sure you find some experiences that you can share with other people—acquaintances, friends, and loved ones. Invite them to visit. Make conversation with people you haven’t met yet, too—Kio Stark did a cool talk about this.

17. Print books and magazines feel alive and well in NYC, because the good people here have decided to keep them that way. Don’t give up on the things you love. Breathe life into them. Instead of complaining, you can care.

18. I have seen both extremely considerate and extremely inconsiderate people here. It’s easy to get upset when people behave unreasonably selfishly, until you realize that they have to deal with the consequences of how it affects their friends and loved ones. They must wonder why people don’t like them. If you choose to be considerate, you’ll experience the opposite: people will appreciate you for just being who you are. Maybe even more importantly, you’ll appreciate you for being who you are. That doesn’t make you a better or worse person than the inconsiderate person—it’s just your style. 

19. NYC has a great ferry service. It’s a very welcome alternative to the subway, especially on a sunny spring day. (Happily for me, there are several piers in FiDi!)

20. If you really want to do something, give it a shot. In my case, against all advice and common sense, it remained a dream of mine to move to NYC. When the opportunity presented itself, my partner and I gave it a try. I feel very grateful for it. I said that life is long earlier—long enough for you to be patient and make meaningful change. It’s also short, so don’t wait around forever.