I need to get some things off my chest. This is gonna be a long personal post you can skip, or read if you are bored and want to know entirely too much about me. :O *awkward turtle* Anyway… My checking account just hit an all-time low. It’s scary enough that it makes me stomach hurt when I look at it now. The reason is that I just bought tickets to my best friend’s bachelorette party in Vegas — a non-negotiable celebration given that I’m her maid of honor. Also, her incredible fiance is helping me pay for my stay. How can someone do that? He straight up told me that it’s worth it to him to make SURE his fiance has the time of her life with her childhood best friend. That would be me. This is really happening. My soul aches with happiness and anxiety. Onto something bigger: buying tickets today committed me to being in Ohio in May. However, I have no idea when and where I will actually find a job. Things are not turning out like I expected. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I just emerged from grad school with a shining resume and a perfect GPA — summa cum laude, scholarships, honors, international experience, all of that crap. Now I make $8.75 an hour at a gym. I can’t understand why not a single prospective employer has emailed me back… Moving back home is therefore essential. I can’t afford to stay. I’ve been making myself feel better about it by saying that I should go back to where I came from, should live near my family and some old friends and should do joyful wedding duties for my best friend. I could maybe rejoin my Grove for ritual. I could try to meet up with the Rooftop Girls. And there will once again be moss and fireflies, forests, songbirds that wake me up at dawn… good things to fill up the emptiness that has been haunting me ever since I moved out here.  Home, however, is no haven of solace. My mother’s mental and physical illnesses dominate everything. Living at home is difficult, tiring, frightening, unpredictable, and endlessly complex. I’m loved. I’m taken advantage of. I’m supported and undermined. And so, though I lay awake longing to move, my possessions half-packed, dear friends on my mind, I fear it. It’s scary not knowing how long I will have to stay. And Colorado has suddenly started to fight to keep me here in powerful ways: - Today my manager gave me a glowing work review and said, “We’re really happy to have you here. It means a lot to us that you are part of our team.” Just prior to this my immediate supervisor told me that at I am her most reliable employee. She said, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I love working with them, too. - Yesterday a good friend sent me a huge list of agencies, career sites, and resources, he’d compiled for me. He wrote, “Hey, sorry to annoy you with another email [he’d just emailed me to tell me I needed to see Arietty because he’d seen it and it reminded him of me], but I thought this might help you find a job here. I don’t mean to sound selfish, but Andy and Justin and I would really like to see you stay…”  - The aforementioned boys (my best friends here) have invited me to host a proper joint graduation party in spring. They’re reserving a venue; family is coming; cakes and booze and shenanigans are predicted. It’s basically going to be the recognition for graduating that I didn’t get in November, complete with us walking together in our Harry Potter-esque Master’s robes. The thought of it all really grabs at my heart. My parent’s didn’t come to my college graduation, but this one… It would mean the world to me to be there and it’s not going to happen. - A friend who runs a very successful weight-loss blog and has published some semi-famous books just reached out to me and asked if I would like to work with him. He can’t pay me in money yet and it couldn’t be many hours a week, but the experience, the benefits to my resume, the training (both physical and blog- / internet startup-related), and the networking would be huge to me. He said he doesn’t mind doing it remotely when I move (and indeed having that to cling to when I go home makes my life much less scary), but it would be a huge bummer to leave when I could do so much PR for him here in person. Also I could get wicked fit. Alas… And that is what is going on.

I need to get some things off my chest. This is gonna be a long personal post you can skip, or read if you are bored and want to know entirely too much about me. :O *awkward turtle* Anyway…

My checking account just hit an all-time low. It’s scary enough that it makes me stomach hurt when I look at it now. The reason is that I just bought tickets to my best friend’s bachelorette party in Vegas — a non-negotiable celebration given that I’m her maid of honor. Also, her incredible fiance is helping me pay for my stay. How can someone do that? He straight up told me that it’s worth it to him to make SURE his fiance has the time of her life with her childhood best friend. That would be me. This is really happening. My soul aches with happiness and anxiety.

Onto something bigger: buying tickets today committed me to being in Ohio in May. However, I have no idea when and where I will actually find a job. Things are not turning out like I expected. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I just emerged from grad school with a shining resume and a perfect GPA — summa cum laude, scholarships, honors, international experience, all of that crap. Now I make $8.75 an hour at a gym. I can’t understand why not a single prospective employer has emailed me back…

Moving back home is therefore essential. I can’t afford to stay. I’ve been making myself feel better about it by saying that I should go back to where I came from, should live near my family and some old friends and should do joyful wedding duties for my best friend. I could maybe rejoin my Grove for ritual. I could try to meet up with the Rooftop Girls. And there will once again be moss and fireflies, forests, songbirds that wake me up at dawn… good things to fill up the emptiness that has been haunting me ever since I moved out here. 

Home, however, is no haven of solace. My mother’s mental and physical illnesses dominate everything. Living at home is difficult, tiring, frightening, unpredictable, and endlessly complex. I’m loved. I’m taken advantage of. I’m supported and undermined.

And so, though I lay awake longing to move, my possessions half-packed, dear friends on my mind, I fear it. It’s scary not knowing how long I will have to stay. And Colorado has suddenly started to fight to keep me here in powerful ways:

- Today my manager gave me a glowing work review and said, “We’re really happy to have you here. It means a lot to us that you are part of our team.” Just prior to this my immediate supervisor told me that at I am her most reliable employee. She said, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I love working with them, too.

- Yesterday a good friend sent me a huge list of agencies, career sites, and resources, he’d compiled for me. He wrote, “Hey, sorry to annoy you with another email [he’d just emailed me to tell me I needed to see Arietty because he’d seen it and it reminded him of me], but I thought this might help you find a job here. I don’t mean to sound selfish, but Andy and Justin and I would really like to see you stay…” 

- The aforementioned boys (my best friends here) have invited me to host a proper joint graduation party in spring. They’re reserving a venue; family is coming; cakes and booze and shenanigans are predicted. It’s basically going to be the recognition for graduating that I didn’t get in November, complete with us walking together in our Harry Potter-esque Master’s robes. The thought of it all really grabs at my heart. My parent’s didn’t come to my college graduation, but this one… It would mean the world to me to be there and it’s not going to happen.

- A friend who runs a very successful weight-loss blog and has published some semi-famous books just reached out to me and asked if I would like to work with him. He can’t pay me in money yet and it couldn’t be many hours a week, but the experience, the benefits to my resume, the training (both physical and blog- / internet startup-related), and the networking would be huge to me. He said he doesn’t mind doing it remotely when I move (and indeed having that to cling to when I go home makes my life much less scary), but it would be a huge bummer to leave when I could do so much PR for him here in person. Also I could get wicked fit. Alas…

And that is what is going on.