Michael Rangel

I moved back to New York City a few weeks ago. I told myself for years I never would. I've been uneasy the whole time and I still can't tell you exactly why. It might be that my wife and daughter aren't here with me, while I can only hear of my daughter accomplishing milestones secondhand. Or, it might be that being here reminds me of the uncertainty from the early days of Novo, the banking platform for solopreneurs I founded in 2016. Or, simply... it might just be fear. Whatever it is, I stopped trying to solve it. I've been working, reading, and trying to make my time count here. Last night I left the office and walked home. Somebody was coming the other way on the sidewalk. Casey Neistat. I have watched this man build in New York for over a decade. He was making things here before "creator" was a job title, and he made it look like the most obvious thing in the world to just start. After a few stumbles, I think I mumbled something to him. I genuinely don't know if it was a sentence or if it made any sense at all (I know... great first impression!). I was close enough that he probably thought he was being mugged, but he stopped anyway, said hi, introduced himself and was gracious about it, and then we both kept walking. I couldn't talk for the rest of the way home. Not because I met a famous person. Because of the odds. Someone whose work changed the direction of my life, walking past me on a Monday night, and all I had to do was say something. The video I'm talking about was the Nike one from 14 years ago. The one where he spent the entire ad budget on traveling the world. I was in my early twenties and I had never seen anyone treat a life that way. That video is a large part of why I've always treated life as an adventure and couldn't be more grateful for having watched it when I did. I've spent weeks trying to figure out whether New York was the right call. I still don't have a clean answer. What I have is a reminder that this city is full of people who started something with no guarantee, and that I'm about to try being one of them again. Still uneasy. Staying anyway.