Life as an Adult

So, I'm alive.

I just realized the other day that it had been awhile since I last updated this blog. Things have been busy up here; I've been working a lot (nearly 40 hours a week, thankfully) and generally just keeping up with day to day things when I'm not.

I have also come to realize that moving up here was the best thing I've ever done.

I love living in my own apartment and working to pay my own rent and bills.

I love learning how to cook.

I love having seasons; fall was AMAZING.

I love the people I work with and I'm incredibly thankful to have the job I have while I continue my search for a vocation.

Yeah, things are good here.

My roommate and I are planning a pretty rad Thanksgiving day breakfast/dinner for our first respective Thanksgivings away from our families. It's going to be difficult being away from everyone in Florida but it's still going to be great.

In less than a month I'll be headed to NYC to see Rammstein. Yeah, I'm still pretty excited about that.

I got nothing else right now.

Life is good.

Y el Gringo se Asusto

Another long day done.

Well, it wasn't as long as yesterday but 8.5 hours on the road after 14 the previous day still justifies the ache behind my eyes.

Dad and I are at a beautiful hotel in Farmington, Connecticut where we're staying until about 8 tomorrow morning before we make the final 2 hour drive to my new life in Massachusetts. It's crazy; I've never driven through so many states in my life and to think I'm going to be living with that many states between everything I've known for the last 25 years.

I'm crazy excited. Or is that wicked excited.

I'll learn.

I just want to be there, get settled, and get things going. I need to find a job and a gym ASAP. The job requirement is obvious but I think the gym is just as important. You see, beginning in January I went on a diet and over the course of 7 months managed to loose all the weight I put on during my time in graduate school. It was a lot and I'm really, really anxious about putting in back on again. I'm really hoping I can find some sort of reasonable fitness center in the area.

Anyway, so tomorrow is the big day! I'm unpacking, shopping and, oddly enough, meeting up with some friends from Florida who just happen to be visiting the area at the same time I'm moving in.

Best get some rest.

See you all tomorrow.

Shippin' up to Boston

So a lot has happened in the past few days.

A very good friend of mine from college came down and she, my sister, and I spent the entire day at Disney World. Understand, when I say all day, I meant we parked the car and didn’t get back into it until 12 hours later. We screamed on the Rockin’ Rollercoaster, we dined in England, we squealed with joy on Big Thunder Mountain and we nearly vomited on the magic teacups. All in all, it was an incredible, perfect, wonderful day and the perfect sendoff to my 25 years in Florida.

Then, I said goodbye to my friends at work and this morning I hugged my mom and my cat goodbye. That was hard. I still remember how my eyes burned.

Immediately after, I spent 14 hours in a truck, loaded with my entire life, with my Dad slowly traveling from Florida up to Virginia where we’ve stopped for the night, 800 miles from where we started. It really didn’t start to get bad until the 8^th hour or so but the fact that I only slept about 2 hours last night surely didn’t help. Plus I got to see these:

which I hadn’t seen in a very long time.

Tonight will be a very, very different story. I had the best freaking beer I’ve ever had in my life, a delicious broccoli and cheese soup, salad and an amazing shower.

I fully intend to be unconsciousness within the hour.

Tomorrow, it’s on to Connecticut where Dad and I are spending another night before I finally reach my new home in Boston.

For now though, there is a comfy bed calling my name.

Climbin' up the Topsails

A lot has happened in this last month. My landlord has cashed my checks, I’ve signed the lease and now I’m getting everything in order before the big move which is officially less than a month away. I’ve starting buying basic essentials for my new place like bedclothes, towels and most importantly, winter clothes; let me tell you, shopping for peacoats in the middle of summer in Florida is quite the experience.

Basically, all I have left to do now is wait.

It’s strange, when I first came to the decision to move to Boston I thought the upcoming three months would be the longest of my life. Now, I can hardly believe that I have less than one month left.

I continue to bounce back and forth between unmanageable excitement and extreme anxiety. Okay, well, maybe not extreme but I still am pretty darn nervous. It’s really strange thinking that I’m going to be so far away from my family – my family that I only moved 100 miles from when I went to college. It’s refreshing and daunting and wonderful.

It all makes me feel extraordinarily ineloquent.

In the next couple of weeks I’m going to work on saying my good-byes, including a trip to Disney with my sister and friends, and then it will be time for my dad and I to hit the road.

Unbelievable.

And wicked awesome.

My Life So Far

So here’s the story:

I graduated from Flagler College in 2007 having earned two bachelors degrees, one in English and the other in Sociology. Like most people, I had grand ideas of what life was going to be like after I graduated college; I was going to have employers banging down my door begging me to come and work for them. Turns out, it didn’t really happen that way and I soon found out that two more “liberal” degrees plus one bad economy equals the continuation of making lattes for people, a job that I have always been thankful for but that is a far cry from my vocational aspirations of non-profit work.

So with much deliberation, I decided to continue my education at the University of Central Florida where in December of 2009 I received my masters degree in Applied Sociology. Now, surely, those employers really would be beating down my door. Once again I have been mistaken. It would seem that even having a higher degree won’t do you much good in a still poor economy, especially for someone who has spent the majority of her life in school rather than garnering actual experience within her field.

So now, at the age of 25 and finding myself in a rut I have embarked on easily the biggest quest of my life: in early September I am packing up and moving to Boston. It was a surprisingly easy decision to make when a very good friend of mine who currently lives there reminded me that, yes, they do in fact have coffee shops in Massachusetts and even though it’s not where my hearts lies, I can make a living that way. At the same time, I can start over and move out of the state that has been my home since the day I was born. Not to mention that my dear parents, continuously supportive though they are, are probably ready to have their house to themselves again. Basically? This 25-year-old finally gets to be an adult.

Today I mailed the checks for my security deposit and my first month’s rent. It’s official. For someone who would describe herself as the polar opposite of spontaneous this is a big deal. A big, freakin’ deal. Things always do have a way of working out though, don’t they? I’m excited and anxious and cannot wait to open this new chapter of my life and record it all here.

See you soon.