Every week, I feel the urge to work from within the confines of my bedroom rather than in an office. In my mind, I'll take the former over traveling 15 minutes in a metal tube, just crammed enough to side-eye the person next to you and make judgements on their character based on their social media feed.
Living in NYC has made me hyper aware of what urges I feel on a day-to-day basis.
When I find myself working in the office, I feel the urge to find an empty corner that I can call my home for the rest of the day. I'd like to think that this urge comes from my yearning to be a good wagey, and not from the fact that I save the corporate small talk for when I'm looking to waste time.
As humans, what is it that drives us?
Is it an urge that lifts you off of your couch, a sudden yearning to get in shape, a compulsion to not go into the office for four weeks?
Or are these needs: necessities, requirements, checkboxes that must not be left blank for us to operate?
At first, some immediate distinctions may come to mind:
- The man in an Elmo costume standing in the middle of Times Square for eight hours a day does not wake up with an urge to relive Sesame Street.
- Vulnerable/afflicted groups - a nicotine addict, for example - does not decide to start their morning with a pack of Camel Crushes out of necessity.
An appropriate answer to this question would be the same answer that I grew particularly fond of throughout my graduate studies in Gainesville: It depends.
- Although not feeling an urge to relive Sesame Street for pay, the man in an Elmo costume may be in a bind (societal, legal, economic, the type of bind matters not) that necessitates him to slip on those fuzzy red boots every morning as his primary source of income.
- Although taking down six cigarettes after your alarm clock goes off is not something that is necessary, the state of the nicotine feign (physiological, biological, psychological, the type of state matters not)makes the objective urge one that needs to be addressed.
I say this not because I am trying to redefine substance abuse or the lengths one must go to to make a living, but as an urban example of how our lives, ambitions and doings are a reflection of these same urges and needs at play.
As I make my way over to the Bryant Park subway station from the office, I feel the urge to people-watch and think where someone might be going, and what urges and needs they might be feeling at that moment.
Although it might feel easy to daydream about another's hopes and dreams or what keeps them up at night, the fog of war never fails to creep in when this focus is shifted inwards. The following section aims to articulate my current needs and urges, what lights a fire under my ass, and what some of those checkboxes look for me today.
I need space.
If it hasn't been made clear to you at the beginning of this post, I have found that I work best in a space that I can curate and allow myself to dive deep into the next to-do. Add New York City, a girlfriend and a 70-pound dog to the formula, and yeah: I need the space.
I feel the urge to create.
The latter half of 2025 involved personal projects that were aimed to truly train my creative muscle (this coming from the Adobe employee - lol). Sure, my 9-5 might consist of clean PowerPoints, screen-shares followed up with demos, and being able to answer impromptu questions about CRM integrations, but where's the fun in that?
My goal for 2026 is to create things like a madman, with the same false confidence as a magician trying out a new trick to an audience for the first time. Why? I believe I am capable of coming up with good ideas, I believe I have the skillset to execute on these ideas, and I believe we are in a day and age where we have all the tools at our disposal to do just that.
I attribute my mother for being blessed with even of a morsel of her creativity, and I have found myself reminded time and time again that:
- As implied earlier, creativity is not genetic, it is a muscle - one that must be trained in various ways like one would their own body.
- Creativity can be practiced in every aspect of one's life.
- Creativity is not a 'one and done', practicing and employing creativity is a lifelong endeavor.
I need impactful stimulation.
It is for this necessity that I've found myself grateful to be living in NYC, the sleepless city that advocates for all kinds of stimulations.
Note the use of the word 'impactful' - I do not need to stimulate myself by means of brainrotting in front of a TV screen or TikTok algorithm (as much as I would like to).
But building a bot network that generates, edits and posts TikTok videos by using public city data to make memes about the number of rat issues a street has experienced in the last month? That's the type of simulation I'm looking for.
I feel the urge to connect with others.
When I look back at the list of doohickeys, prototypes and MVPs that have all found a place in my Downloads folder, I realize that my ideas originate from redefining social experiences. Whether it be trying to reinvent what it means to be a student-athlete and interact with fans, be a dog owner in the city and connect with others, or the way we perceive and talk about streets, they are all tied by the single thread of community and societal interactions. Like a spider, it appears that my biological nature has resulted in a need to turn that thread into a sprawling web.
I need to finish this post.
All of the needs above (including this one) may be interpreted as urges and vice versa. It is for you to daydream what my hopes and dreams are, and for me to make my own sense of it. I urge you to step into the fog and practice thought exercises like the one we've done today - who knows, maybe you'll need it.