The One Year Anniversary

passed without much fanfare, I'm sorry to say. It was on Tuesday for my one year since beginning with my company, and Saturday for the one year since I actually made the official move to New York from small town North Carolina. And what a journey it has been! I can't believe how much I've learned in such a short period of time. How cities work. Why public transportation is such an amazing thing. And why I need to plan for my future better.

So I'm doing that now. Working out the details, coming up with various theories of what I would want my life to be like and who I want to include in it. Watching my friends change jobs, go back to school, graduate from school, get married, settle down, get divorced, move forward with their lives. I feel so fortunate to be not just an observer, but a true participant in living up here. I'm able to enjoy my friend's accomplishments, mourn them their losses and know that if the same happens to me I'll be lucky enough to have the same response.

I'm also figuring out what I want to do and don't want to. I'm slowly becoming aware that I'm not really cut out for a 365 days a year, 9-5 job. But working out how to make that into a life that allows me to be independent is a whole other realm. I remember working during the summers when I was in college and being aware that I liked it. Liked having that free time in the evening and morning when I wasn't concerned about what kind of grade I was going to get on a test or finishing a paper or editing my stories. I liked just writing to write, and working to pay the bills, and reading any book I felt like. Now, here i am only a year and a half later, wanting out, wanting to figure out how to pay my bills and reading but also how to move up in the world and do a job that I am going ot be rewarded for doing. It's difficult enough to figure out what you would possibly want to do for twenty or thirty or even forty years, but I'm on the way. I can't believe just ten years ago I was only beginning high school, that I was dancing and doing gymnastics and going to camp. Certainly not worried about paying off credit cards and contributing to an IRA account and saving some money because I would eventually want to own a house. Ten years ago I couldnt' think past how I looked in a two piece and why my boobs weren't as big as one of my friend's.

Thinking about how things hve changed, how I've grown and my friends and I have parted and gone our seperate ways is crazy. It's an amazing world we live in. I couldn't of dreamed of the boyfriend I would have now, or imagined I would manage to work out a relationship that lasted longer than a TV mini-series. But I am doing all of the above. I have my own apartment, my own space, I cook for myself, do my own laundry, clean and watch TV on my own time make decisions about whether to spend my weekends in bed or at a gallery. And it's awesome. Yay for the One Year. It's given me time to realize what I'm capable of and why my life could work out for hte best.