After doing the last Christmas shopping I sat at Sofia’s to unwind; bags were already packed and there was nothing else to do but relax before flying early the next morning. Leo, the bartender, gave me a glass of their best champagne and while chilling at the bar I simmered into a million thoughts.  These last few days have been one of the few moments in which I’ve spent time with myself; a very much-needed silence between trips and with just a handful of friends in New York.  It was when Leo refilled my glass that everything was clear to me: I’m a New Yorker; my life is here; not somewhere else. I’ve been living for so long with a longing for the other place, for the ones I left behind without acknowledging what I have built for me here.   For a moment I thought about the fruit flies that appeared in our office a couple of months ago. They stand on our coffee mugs and annoyingly circulate in front of our monitors. “It feels that we’re working in Ecuador or India”, Lindsey would say trying to kill one.  My theory is that we brought them from one of our trips and for a reason they are thriving in their new environment. What is needed to survive and grow? For the flies it seems that sugar and a cozy environment suffices. This is of course considering that the metric is to survive and reproduce extensively and not to be happy, fulfilled, loved, empowered, and so many other complex definitions of success.  New York is challenging, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as lonely anywhere else and the concept of anxiety took a new dimension. At the same time it has given the opportunity to try my strength, friends have become family and it has seldom being boring.  To challenge oneself might be a good way of thriving.  Although some of us feel in the paradox of wanting to anchor and keep sailing, there is not necessarily a dichotomy as we might find people to sail with. Probably, as with the fruit flies, the wind of inspiration or a tourist will take me to a new port.