It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...April

It’s been a while, and so much has changed. Not the weather, but just about everything else.

When last I updated this thing I was unemployed and living with my parents. Granted, that part of my life lasted a mere two or three months (depending on your metric), but my present could not be more different from where I was just a month ago.

I started working for the city of Burlington in the middle of March. I won’t go into too many details (as that is not the focus of what I’m trying to convey here…though it may come up in the future), but suffice it to say, it’s just about as perfect a gig as I could hope for outside of a career in writing. I am so stupidly happy with this job. I cannot believe that I lucked into this.

As of one week ago tomorrow I became a Burlington resident. And, I may be a little biased, but I have the best apartment ever. Seriously, only in some of my wilder dreams did I imagine a place so wonderful in such a perfect location (two words: Lake view). Here’s a fun factoid: Burlington is the largest city I’ve ever lived in. I know. I’ve lead a sheltered, tiny life. As much as this move has been quite the adjustment I think I’m happy here.

That’s not entirely accurate. I know I’m happy here. I am hesitant to say that I’m happy here because this whole thing seems like it’s made of spun sugar and it’s about to melt any second. While I don’t feel out of control (my least favorite state of being ever) I do feel like I’m walking a tightrope, like the rug could be pulled out from underneath me at any moment, like I’m going to wake up and still be living in an attic, working a job that was great but not right for me, and waiting for my life to begin.

In the midst of all this change I’ve realized something. In all the other things I’ve ever done in my life *I* have not been my biggest consideration. The jobs I’ve taken, the moves I’ve made, the places I’ve gone – they were all based on what was best for everyone and not what was best for me. It’s not as though I didn’t want to be where I ended up, it’s just that I didn’t really make the choice to do any of the things I did.

In that respect, I’m incredibly lucky. So many amazing opportunities were handed to me. Some were great, some were not so great, but I didn’t have to strive for any of them. I also didn’t seek any of them out, and thus I wonder if I was never quite as happy as I might have been if I tried a little harder or waited for something that suited me a little better. Ultimately, I think that I didn’t really know what I wanted before. I still don’t.

The difference this time is that I made all the choices that have brought me here. I decided I was ready to leave my old job. I decided on the criteria for places I’d like to live and checked each possibility out before making the big decision. I decided on the kind of jobs I’d like to try. I decided on where in the city I wanted to live. And by making those decisions I took a huge step in determining my own destiny, something I was terrified to do before. I think I let opportunities happen to me instead of seeking them out because I was afraid of making the wrong decision. I was so scared that I would do something wrong and end up in a terrible position that I did nothing and ended up numb.

The phrase that has become my mantra is “just try.” Outcomes are irrelevant. There’s no way you can game out every possibility, so why not just dip your toe in and see how it goes? I honestly don’t know how I came to this particular conclusion but trying and deciding are what brought me here. And here is good.

P.S. In case you were wondering, the title of this blog is a spoof of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” If you don’t understand why, you don’t live in the norther US right now. We get it winter, your mad, please stop marching back into the room while yelling “AND ANOTHER THING!”