New Year, New State, New Job…

I have strayed from my wayward tendencies. For the entirety of 2006 I was, for the most part, in the same place, doing the same thing. At one point I even had an apartment of my own and a lease. The universe, however, has intervened and presented me with an opportunity.

Wednesday evening an inspiring woman I met through my dad called to offer me a part-time position with the magazine Oregon Business in Portland, Oregon. I start in two weeks. It is an administrative position working to help organize a giant project next fall. For the first few months I’ll work 16 hours a week and progress to 20, then 30 hours, as we get closer to the event. Additionally, I will probably have the chance to do an internship with the editorial side of the magazine. The internship won’t be paid, but it will be a great step toward what I want to be doing. I am extremely excited to be making these changes. If you see my previous post, from all of four days ago, this is exactly what I want to do. I don’t know for sure yet, but I also have the sense that the people I will be working with are bright, intelligent, organized, positive, supportive people doing great work. After a year of feeling like I’ve been treading water, I’m finally going somewhere.

I am also excited to be in Portland in general. Grass Valley is a very lovely area but there is a serious lack of job or economic opportunities, culture, young people or things to stimulate the mind in general. The people are very nice and the hiking, camping, biking, running, swimming and other such outdoor activities are stunning, but neither I nor my Christopher can see being here three years from now. Portland, on the other hand, has over a dozen close, supportive family members, friends, museums, nightlife, a myriad of job opportunities in a wide range of fields, relatively affordable housing, public transportation and all those things that make a place easier and more appealing to live in. It also has great outdoor activities. One must, however, be resigned to getting a little wetter than here in California.

The pay at my job won’t be great, but it will be enough to live on and I’m trying to work out a plan to do some house sitting for family friends. This way I will still be thoroughly wayward and be able to buy lots of plane tickets back to California. I will need to be buying lots of plane tickets because my Christopher will still be living here.

This is, of course, the giant dark cloud in the equation. Unfortunately my Christopher has this super job, doing cool stuff, getting all sorts of opportunities and working with great people. To make matters even worse, he also has this great house with cheap rent and great roommates that is right by his work and is perfect for his dog. Rotten huh?

So, for now, we’ll have to do that terrible long-distance thing. Fortunately I’ll be working part-time and so will have lots of time to fly back for long weekends. And the job only goes through September. So we’ll see how things go. Maybe his job will start to suck and he’ll move up. Or maybe I’ll really get going with freelance writing and then be able to work from anywhere once the temporary job ends. We are just trying to take it one step at a time and trust that it will all work out. These are, after all, changes that need to happen and it is a wonderful opportunity.