Realize that sleeping on a futon when you’re 30 is not the worst thing.  You know what’s worse?  Sleeping in a king bed next to a wife you’re not really in love with but for some reason you married, and you got a couple kids, and you got a job you hate.  You’ll be laying there fantasizing about sleeping on a futon.  There’s no risk when you go after a dream.  There’s a tremendous amount to risk to playing it safe.
Bill Burr

Nothing to lose, then, so everyone go get some.

I revisited this quote today, which I like for the sentiment of taking risks and following dreams, obviously.  But it occurred to me that it’s particularly interesting for my fellow LI 20somethings, because some of our dreams are just playing it safe, and being able to afford it.  Some of us just dream of home ownership and/or a brood of our own.  For a piece of land to latch on to near our extended families, who settled here when it wasn’t so difficult.  We can’t afford anything right now, for the most part, where the median price for purchasing is $375k.  I’ve been piecemealing room rentals, education, and hospitality jobs to make myself a life I love near the people I love, who worked this land during easier generations and lower property values.

Most of my contemporaries have either moved off the island or still live with their parents.  Thank you but – no thank you.  If I left again for a time, I know I’d still end up here for the long haul.  I could rent a two-bedroom for the same price in East Hampton as Brooklyn; it’s not for my wallet that I remain, but for my sanity.  I keep getting drawn back out to the tail, to the sunset nooks I know, to the comfort of a quiet winter and a warm bumbling summer, balancing the American retail satisfaction of Riverhead with the soul-refreshing ease of the North Fork.

We are a unique breed – forever incubating in the shadow of NYC; honoring our farming heritage, our fishing culture, our strip mall propensity; trying to protect some of our land from development; seeing the wealth concentrate on the coasts while pockets of the center fester.  Excluding Brooklyn and Queens, Long Island makes up about 15 percent of New York State’s population; and we’re so damn tiny.  (And including them, we make up about 40 percent…!) We are something special, in my opinion.

So in a lot of ways this blog is my wish from the fish.  It’s all the things I love here, plus all the things I’ve loved about leaving here….