It's Not All Bars and Ball Games

This is a really weird time of year. Everything ending and beginning at the same time. Summer romances fade, the days ever so slowly start to get shorter, the Orioles start to really suck while the Redskins tend to be pretty decent, nights might be cool and it seems although I haven't been in school for a couple years now there is an anticipation that's been burned into my subconciousness that knows something is going to happen... and soon.

So behind all the nights out at bars, random events, ball games, concerts and all around fun that has been my "summer" there's been a very strong, pervasive, irritating anxiety within me.

You see, I moved home to save money and move to New York in October. Turns out I've saved no money and The Date has been moved to November. But I'm thousands of dollars off of my ideal budget, haven't gotten any job I've applied for and slowly but surely started to realize things.

I have started to realize that something larger within me is coming to an end. It's the stumbling and fumbling, the moving, the scraping and scraping by, the selling of things for plane tickets, gas, the part-time jobs, the credit card accounts I opened to buy groceries - it's old. For the first time in years I don't have the urge to get in my car and just move somewhere, the urge to get on the next plane out of BWI or Dulles or National airport. There is no city in the US I want to visit, no country in which I desire to teach english. For the first time in a very very long time I just want everything to stop, to slow down, to settle.

Every night I go out, every afternoon I make a latte or write in here I think, am I moving to New York or not? Will I regret either decision? How much will it hurt to move my boxes from NY to the room in which I grew up in DC while two of my best friends move theirs into what will be a two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn - where I've wanted to live for years.

Sometimes it's great to live life moment by moment, on the edge, adventurous, experimenting, living with some sort of firey urgency. Then, I'm starting to realize, other times it's OK to take a step back, that the world will probably be here tomorrow, that New York City is not going anywhere, that sometimes it's better to stop and let things fall into your lap rather than ferociously chase after them.

I think.

I have four weeks to decide.

In four weeks I might no longer be employed by a Corporate Coffee Shop. I might not have amazing benefits. I might have a waitressing job. I might have a temp job. I will have decided when I'm taking the GREs. I'll probably know where I'm applying to graduate school. I might now know if this is the right decision. I might have landed an internship that will keep me in DC until summer 2006 or an internship that will require me to be in NYC the following Monday for at least a year. Maybe I'll have a contracted, salaried, full-time job in New York or maybe in DC. In four weeks I will put the last four months of anxiety, of pondering, of restless, dreamless nights behind me and be on somewhat solid ground for the first time in years.


Last week I sat at a bar in Baltimore I used to frequent with my old boss. I told him he ruined me, that I had the best boss I would ever have in life at the age of 22. The amount of responsibility he bestowed upon me, the hours he would philosophize with me, argue with me, challenge me, teach me. The last time we hung out before I moved to LA was in the same bar wherein which we sat last week. That night, over a year ago, he handed me a book, hardcover, wrapped. It was the Great Gatsby and on the inside cover he wrote, Read this every year until life makes sense.

Right now that book sits in a box that is taped up along with other taped-up boxes of my belongings in a closet in my old apartment in Los Angeles. Tomorrow (tomorrow) a moving company will come in and put those boxes and our living room furniture, my pint glasses, photos, sheets, and all of my roommates stuff, into a huge pod that will go into storage for a month somewhere and then will be driven across this country and land in New York on November 1st. Will I be there with it?

So at this bar I chatted with my boss over a few pints of Yuengling. He reads this blog, he has a good idea of what's going on with me... kind of...
"You could go somewhere like Idaho City," he said, "That'd be way different."
"Yeah... I'm kinda over my small town, cowboy-romance phase." I told him. "I dunno... I'm thinking this whole stay-in-DC thing might not be that awful... stick around, make some cash, travel somewhere amazing like Nepal or Thailand..."
"Oh yeah, Nepal, that'd be fun."
"Trekking in the Himalayas? I've always wanted to do that... or Thailand... my friend's there now."
"Well it's an opportune time to go there now then."
"Yeah. I guess... I mean... yeah... but I just... I love New York, I just do... I don't know what to do." I said and took a sip of my beer.
"You know what would be really different for you, Alli? If you want to do something really different?" he asked me.
"What?" I said.
"Get a full-time job. 9-5. Salary. Benefits."
I sat in silence for a minute and smiled. "Yeah," I said, "That would be so weird."
"You've never done that before, have you?"
"Nope," I said and chuckled. "It's my worst nightmare.... I think."

So we sat there a while longer not really talking about this particular subject. We moved on to easier, lighter topics, things with solid answers. The next day I looked for jobs and the day after that I did the same. I went back to the Corporate Coffee Shop and made your espresso drink and went to a bar with my good friends. I said hello to strangers and asked for help and put myself out there every single day and tomorrow I will do the same. My boxes will be packed and moved tomorrow and the next day maybe my phone will ring, and sometime within the next four weeks something will be a little more tangible, a little more settled, a little easier, a little more real, a little less mythical.