My 14th St. place was where I really stepped into my identity as a writer, although if you’d asked me then (and even on certain days now) to own that, to actually say, “I’m a writer,” I’d have dissembled and aw-shucks-ed my way through the admission. Somehow I thought I’d fallen into the writer/editor position at SPIN through some weird tear in the universe when no one was paying attention. That it was a quirk I happened to be interviewing The Cure, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the dozens upon dozens of other musicians who rolled through my orbit as I, with tape recorder and pen/pad in hand, watched, listened, and wrote about them. In reality, the job was hard work and had happened because I’d been single-minded about getting it. I realize now that just because something is a dream and it comes true doesn’t mean you a) don’t deserve it and/or b) will always feel dreamy—I mean, dreams can get pretty dark. Overall during my almost four years at SPIN, I’d step out of my 14th St. place with my headphones on and my schedule packed with music, travel, and interviews, and head to the SPIN offices feeling my power and thinking, Hell, yeah, this is me. I could hold that attitude for pretty long time.

What usually threw me off was stepping off the elevator into a tornado of guy ego-energy blowing through hallways. If I’d been able to see then the cock-walking and the bull-snorting for what it was: the aggressive territory marking of humans just as insecure as I was, I would have probably been able to sail through to my office entertained rather than intimidated, but I didn’t have that insight then. Instead, I’d fall for it, thinking, These guys are so much more music journalist than me. Just listen to them wax on about B-sides and the lost recordings of basement tapes that decipher the early sounds of R.E.M. and Metallica.

Luckily around that time, a group of kick-ass women entered my life who reminded me what feminine get-shit-done-with-integrity-and-fun looked like in that maelstrom of male music egos.

When I moved to NYC, two great friends had also moved from Cali within a year of my arrival, and we were still incredibly tight, but the women I met in the music industry were a different sort of magic carpet ride—one that I needed to pull me along in both my career and my personal life. Even as the atmosphere at SPIN became more and more toxic with predation and stress, I was finding I could feel my power in these friendships. There were certainly times when I’d wonder what they saw in me given I didn’t think I held the same status in the music biz, but looking back, I realize my perspective was smudged by my own self-doubt. These ladies and I weren’t the same sort of close that I had with my two friends from Cali. Although we confided in each other about a lot of things, there wasn’t a deep level of secret-sharing. To me the relationship felt more like a ride-a-long into some deep space music adventure. Each of us with a role to play: There were the two tough-ass music managers who wrangled tetchy personalities into submission, the two MTV executives who called a lot of the shots around what videos would get rotations and which bands would get airtime, the music-PR lady who knew exactly how to fashion a campaign around an up&comer or a been-around-the-block-too-much artist. Then there was me: The scribe. My role, metaphorically, to climb through the windows of a musician’s psyche, watching them work and recording their life. These ladies were the ones who built the house whose windows I accessed. They decided what color the walls would be and how the whole operation might look to the wider world. But also, I was lucky enough to be given access to creative sorts who would let me into places where today the structure of PR, managers, and company executives would never let a writer go.

It was a heady time, even if in some corner of my mind I felt there was an expiration date to the whole adventure. Coming back to my apartment to a voice machine filled with bill collectors reminded me that my orbit had much less financial oxygen. My salary didn’t even come close to theirs, but they never knew that since money was my shame point and so I wouldn’t have admitted I couldn’t afford the dinners, trips, shopping moments. I’d slap down my credit card with the rest of them for a flight to some palm-tree place, then turn down the volume of worry around how I would pay the bill. At that point in my life, I felt everything would be taken care of in the future. Right now I was doing this, spending that, following my desires. Perhaps, if you’d questioned me back then, I might have asked: What’s the problem? I’m living in the moment. But that Buddha-mindset was not zen-based, it was avoidance-driven. I did have an inkling it would all come crashing down though.

And of course, it did. Four years in, at the tail end of my 14th St. stay, I walked (ran) out of SPIN feeling like I wanted to peel off my skin even though I didn’t spend any time (at the time) to figure out where this sensation came from. I stepped into the land of talent booker at Jane Pratt’s TV show where I was a contractor (read: no more health insurance) and where the pay was even less. But I didn’t care. When that ended six months later, I collected unemployment, did some freelance writing, joined up with a couple of people to rep video directors, then landed a stupidly high-paying job at Elektra Records as the VP of video promotion. This would prove to be absolutely disastrous to my creativity and love of music, even though I’ll always be incredibly grateful to my dear friend J for getting me the position since it gave me a rest from money woes.

Never one to just build a savings account, I decided to move with the cat to a doorman building near Union Square so I could continue to spend more than I should have in order to be a part of New York City’s movin’-on-up set. Next week: reasons why doormen and burning candles (not necessarily at the same time) lead to awkward interactions and how to defer depression with retail therapy.