Long-time readers know about my ambivalence about this whole venture (you know, GRADUATING, and all that comes after). Now that I’ve put my name on a lease and signed a contract for a job, everything feels permanent. At least, much more permanent than before, when I arrived in Massachusetts in early June with just my mom and a few suitcases of clothes. The thing is, I don’t do things like this. Meaning, I don’t pick up my life and just go places: my family still lives in the same house where I was born, I stayed in-state for college, and every major trip (New York, South Africa) has always, ultimately, led back to a safe life in Ohio. And I PLAN things. I make lists and keep track and email and text, put enormous pressure on myself and subsequently always have my ducks in a row. And things have always gone pretty well for me. I don’t just follow some guy that I met in a bar across the country, and I don’t go there without a plan. Until, eventually, one day I did.
I’ve never publicly spoken about the difficulties I felt this summer— because, well, when you’re going through a hard time, the idea of broadcasting that to hundreds of strangers is less than appealing. The truth is, I got very homesick, and I spent a lot of days wondering what I’m doing here. I missed my friends, and can’t explain the ache that occurred when many returned to college and I didn’t join them. I wrote maybe sixty cover letters this summer. I interviewed every week I’ve been in Boston, save the first. I got a lot of emails that said, “Thanks for applying— we really loved meeting you, but we’re going to go with someone else.” I worked a tough job that paid me too little. I had a breakdown at the MGH stop on the Red Line once after partying all night with Zak, when he took me out to distract me from my increasing sense of worry over underemployment. It didn’t work. The train stayed in the station for forty minutes and I screamed at him in a car full of embarrassed onlookers. “What the fuck am I doing here?” I barked. “I have NO IDEA when I’m going to get a good job. I came here with NO PLAN. I don’t even LIKE YOU that much! And what kind of BULLSHIT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM is this where the trains stop running at one when the bars close at two?” Boys never understand how important it is to just have a good, cathartic cry once in a while, but Zak didn’t ask any questions. Instead, he petted my hair while I sobbed in his lap, and in the morning made me breakfast and then took me to play with the kittens at the pet store. When I asked him why he didn’t just leave me at the train station (because I certainly deserved it), he said (because he’s basically Mr. Darcy), “I wouldn’t do that. We don’t do that. We pull through.”
So, I pulled through. And I learned to quit feeling sorry for myself. I realized that paying attention to anonymous Internet commenters or the kids I went to college with who are working at their dad’s companies or my own self-doubt wasn’t going to get me a job. Searching for jobs was going to get me a job. So, I kept looking and kept applying and kept interviewing, until I got a call last Friday and something stuck. In retrospect, I am very, very lucky: my search only lasted two and a half months. I’m also blessed because the new gig is exciting: it’s at a really innovative, interesting PR agency, and I’ll be doing work that I enjoy and that helps organizations I admire. And I’m SO grateful: to my family and friends, for taking every single phone call; to my hosts here in Boston and to the cafe for literally allowing me to survive; to Zak and his family, for always making me feel welcome in their home; to Kevin Fanning’s amazing book Let’s All Find Awesome Jobs for its humor and encouragement; and, of course, to you, for your well-wishes and kindness through what has been a tumultuous and stressful period. I feel ready to start extensively writing again, because I’m in a place where I can do that joyfully and with abandon. I’m not trying to sound hokey. I’m just excited to finally, really start the rest of my life.
