How to Be In Your Twenties in New York

1. Get a subscription to Harper’s, the Paris Review and Time Out New York. Read the first two for intellectual stimulus, read the second for its club listings.

2. Say yes to everything, and stay out all night every weekend as much as you can stand it. These are the years to do everything you will later regret.

3. Don’t watch a lot of television. In fact, better not to have one at all. Watching TV is like filling your life with foam packing. Yes, you won't rattle around as much, but it will also suffocate you.

4.  Know as many people as you can. Be as non-judgmental as possible, and that doesn’t just mean accepting people with wild lifestyles. That means accepting people with not so wild lifestyles, and people who aren’t so accepting themselves. Know as many people as possible and enjoy their company. Have deep, long lasting friendships, have ten minute friend-flings. Sip and gulp, savor and choose to swallow or not, but drink often from the cup.

5.  Live in your work. That may mean your art, your projects, or your actual job, but let it consume you. Let it be your driving purpose. Yes, Americans are workaholics and yes we may envy the European model of leisure, but I don’t know anyone born and raised in this country who could ever successfully follow the European model of “Food is Love.’ In the end, what will make you happy is your work, so live it and love it.

6. Eat and drink! In other words, work hard, and play hard. Drink yourself dizzy, fill up. Consume! Enjoy long dinners and sloppy curbside snacks. Wine and cheese are the grease and mortar that simultaneously keep the world limber and hold it together. Ingest both in large amounts. Be the Bacchus!

7. Explore! Move! Walk around! You have a lot of wine and cheese to work off! Stay healthy! Always give your body what it wants – that means beer and drugs, but also spinach, apples and exercise. Do it all.

8. If you’re a woman, make love like a praying mantis. If you’re a man, make love like a praying mantis.

9.Be the person everyone wants to be. Don’t wait for someone else to sweep you into a whirlwind romance, a night of revelry and joy, a moment of pure bliss – you do the sweeping, you take charge. I’ll say it again! Be the Bacchus!

10. Make time for yourself. Very important. Be alone, meditate, take naps, read, take the time to be quiet and still. And for the love of Pete get out of the city at least once every two months, if not more.

Oops, there’s my cell! Enjoy! As ever, -John