I’m pretty good at following recipes. I’m somehow an absolutely terrible cook, but I follow the recipes.

Every day, I make a mental plan. They’re mostly just lists—I don’t need to create a calendar where every hour is color coded and even naps are budgeted into the afternoons. Sometimes the plan is just shower, commute, work, lunch, work, drinks with a friend, commute, home, and bed, but I feel better when I’m able to anticipate the next activity.

Naturally, that personality trait carries over when I plan for the future. I arrived in New York with the sense that the way to success was as clearly laid out in front of me as the set of grimy stairs I climbed to my new apartment. Take this internship, meet these people, those people help you get a job after the internship is over, work your way up in a company or jump around through a couple similar positions, and finally claim your Dream Job. The recipe is right there, and I just have to follow it (and keep an eye on the oven).

After a few days at my new internship, though, I realized that the recipe is bullshit. Or at least outdated.

Continuing to stick to that path would mean following a recipe that I don’t fully understand and that keeps changing every few months anyway. Trying to think about what the “right” thing to do every time I make a decision in this city is exhausting, and having to stop and consider every consequence would paralyze me; I’d never get anything done. The recipe, which was supposed to reduce anxiety and fear of “the unknown” would cause more problems than it solved. In a new city where my support network is disjointed, I just can’t put myself under that kind of pressure.

The first time I sat down with my new boss, she told me that there are two things she learned her first year in advertising:

1. Everyone’s bullshitting most of the time. If you think that someone has it all figured out, it’s probably just because of their job title or because they happened to say something particularly eloquently.

2. If you fuck up, no one dies. It’s just advertising.

I’m not going to die. (Today.) (Probably.) When I’ve talked to friends and family about my new experiences, what I’ve realized is that I feel really dumb in this city. I don’t understand some of the weird specifics—subway etiquette, summer fashion that works on both the hot street and the cold office, grocery shopping in a place where you have to walk everywhere and the stores are tiny.

Coincidentally, “WALK IN STUPID” is printed on the notebook was waiting on my desk on my first day at work. It’s a reminder that everyone’s making things up as they go, and that there’s no recipe. I believe that now, and I’m ready to ad lib for a few months.

Here goes nothing.