How do you spot a first timer in New York City? Easy. They’re the ones constantly looking up in wonderment at the towering buildings that fill the view of the sky. Either that or they’re busy getting mugged.

A few months ago I was dancing wildly under the full moon in the Sahara desert. Now I found myself in the sprawling metropolis that is New York City. They couldn’t have been more different.

Growing up in London I thought New York wouldn’t have that much of an effect on me. I was wrong.

Much like when I visited Rome last year, I spent my first night in the Big Apple exploring the city with nothing but a notebook and a bottle of water in my bag. I didn’t even have a map this time, not that I needed it; what with the streets being arranged by numbers: 5th Street was next to 6th Street and so on. I could count.

I remember coming out of my hotel on the first night and turning the corner… and squinting. I was greeted to the bright lights of Times Square. My face lit up. Not because I had a million worth of watts shining down on me but because I’d made it to New York City.

And I made it without managing to eat once on my eight-hour bus journey over from Montreal. My first port of call was to eat something. The sights and sounds of the city could bloody well wait for my stomach to stop growling, thank you very much.

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I appear to be on the precipice of a situation in which I find myself willingly falling towards; gravity has no power over me, I am in fact choosing to meet the ground face on – teeth first.

What the hell am I talking about?

You know when you meet someone amazing? Someone who completes you when you already feel whole? Someone who inspires you enough to end all sentences with a question mark, simply because using a full stop would mean putting a premature end to describing their awesomeness?

I’ve found that person in the most unexpected of places.

In between the bookshelves at work; with messy brown hair and glasses so officiously large, if they were to carry a wand around with them, they’d very well be mistaken for Harry Potter. Or a bit of twat.

No, I haven’t just discovered the literary delights of a certain JK Rowling. I did in fact discover those many years ago.

Instead, I have found something, or rather, someone, who I have decided is worth giving up my job for and eloping to Canada with. I won’t mention at this point that them kissing the place just behind my ear would induce me to act in similar, irrational ways. That’s just not important.

And yes, it’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever agreed to do (except for maybe that perm I had about six years ago) but I know it’s the right thing to do, because even when the fear of giving up a perfectly reasonable job eats away at me like a bout of terminal cancer, I know that I’ll be okay.

I know that whatever absurd, embarrassing, I’m-going-to-die-of-shame moments that will undoubtedly come my way in the following weeks, I know they will be shared in the best possible company.

I know that when I find myself back in London, jobless and with no money having spent it all gallivanting around Northern America with nothing but someone else’s clothes on my back – I know it will all be okay.

And even if it won’t be, I’m sure I’ll have a hell of time getting to that point of: Where did it all go wrong?

My only concern will be, when can we do it again?