A New Year

It's been a while since my last post, which I apologize for. The holidays brought an abundance of egg nog, credit card debt and - in Washington this year - snow. But what they did not bring was time and especially not time for writing. But that's just me making excuses.

The New Year (yes, I'm capitalizing it), as per usual, has left me questioning where I am, and what I should be moving toward. This time last year I was laid off from my first "real job" and made the decision to move across the country to what I had deemed the exact opposite of San Juan Bautista. Replace feral chickens with high-strung New Yorkers, sub mission-style architecture with skyscrapers and brownstones...then see what happens. The results have been somewhat mixed. Especially because I'm not doing what I came here to do: write. But I don't think my time here has been a wash. And I'm saying that now in spite of the fact that my apartment is currently without running water for the fifth time in my 3 months living there. Ah well.

While I don't love my current job, by any means, I do think it has been a good experience. Now, I can cite real office experience when applying to editorial assistant positions. I spent New Year's Eve at my restaurant monitoring the inflation of 5,000 silver and black balloons - and don't think that didn't go on the top of my resume. But seriously. I've been applying to more jobs recently and have broadened my search to even positions vaguely related to writing (if it requires crafting carefully worded emails, I'm there). New York Magazine had a feature chronicling "My Laid-Off Life" for several New Yorkers (out of the 33,000 who have been laid off since August.) The article is a nice reminder for anyone who needs it (don't we all?) of how grateful we should feel to have jobs in the current economy. And I say this knowing full-well that my position is somewhat superfluous at my restaurant and risks being eliminated if the covers remain low. Who knows where I'll be in 2010 - what coast, what profession, what coffee shop - but I'm excited to see what happens in the next year.