This week, I got to experience some New York glamour.  Between celebrity sightings (three of which were in my office), getting to play with Lady-Gaga-esque designer sunglasses in the fashion closet of one of my favorite magazines, and being chauffeured around Manhattan in a company car to pickup samples from designers ranging from Chanel to Zegna to Burberry, it was everything I had dreamed my stay in New York would be.

To die for Lady Gaga sunglasses.

But that’s the funny thing about living your dreams, they rarely end up exactly as you thought they would be. Don’t get me wrong, I had one of the most incredible weeks of my life—it was just a little different than I imagined.  Not worse.  Just different.

Take my “celebrity sightings” for example. Though two are classified (as they relate to upcoming GQ features), I can tell you that Mark Indelicato, better known as Betty’s kid nephew Justin on Ugly Betty, is interning at Teen Vogue for the summer, which shares a floor with GQ. While he may be as fabulously dressed as his character on Betty, Marc is just like the rest of us doing internships – trying to learn something and get a foot in the door somewhere (though, I suppose, at fifteen he is getting a bit of a head start).

This came as somewhat of a surprise to me. I, like most of America, was under the impression that having celebrity status gave you a huge advantage over everybody else.  This is probably because in our media-driven culture (especially in New York), we have placed the celebrity business under a huge magnifying glass. We are seemingly obsessed with stardom.

Of course, media scholars and psychologists have been writing about this for quite sometime.  One theory called “Celebrity Worship Syndrome“, suggests that average people follow celebrity gossip and Hollywood drama because it takes us away from our own hum-drum lives by letting us live vicariously through others.

But from what I’ve seen this week, being a celebrity does not make you different than anyone else – it’s just another career. And it doesn’t fix all of your problems.  While I’m no celebrity, I can tell you that getting to ride in a company car doesn’t transport you to some magical other world; it just takes you to the eight different places you have to pick up from in under an hour.

We’re all trying to make it somewhere, to find purpose in something—even those who have seen their name in lights. So don’t waste your life living it vicariously through anyone else. Live your own life. Be your own celebrity.

-Will Defebaugh, Creative Director