The DCG Has an Epiphany

If you had told me one year ago that at 24 I would have uprooted my entire life and career and moved to a city where I knew virtually no one, that I would be looking in a mirror in an upstairs bathroom, straightening my hair and listening to a bunch of goofy boys freestyling to jam band music downstairs ad thinking how happy I was, that I'd be talking to my mother on the phone and convincing her that I really did love a city covered in 50 inches of snow and never wanted to move back to my beloved South, I would have pushed my feet a little farther into the sand, looked out at the ocean and told you that you obviously didn't know me very well.

But apparently the joke was on me.

I think it is so funny to think about where I was this time last year, even 7 months ago, and how different the place I am in now is from the place I'd dreamed that I'd be.  Up to the moment I pulled out of my driveway, I didn't really think I would do it.  I couldn't leave behind my entire family, my entire heart, and go to some city that I had been once.  What would I do when I got there?  What if I hated my roommates?  What would I do for a job? A bed?  What if I couldn't make any friends?

I was petrified.  I was leaving everything, EVERYTHING, that I had ever known behind on some crazy need to start anew.  I couldn't do it.  But I did.  And I'll never regret it.

I'm sitting in Beardy's bed, listening to him and his friends sing everything from classics to improvised songs about Shakeweights while they strum lazily on guitars.  Tears are literally rolling out of my eyes.

I pull my tank top over my damp hair and look out the window at the mounds of snow outside and count the days until Spring.  My shoulders tense up when I think that I only have two days left until I have to go back to work, and the pressure of being an English major in an accounts receivable job.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.  I can't remember the last time I was this happy.  And I think that is the most ridiculous thought I have ever had.  Because I'm a Southern girl...to the core.  I can't live without my family.  I'm supposed to hate the cold and the snow and the business of the city.  But I can't imagine myself anywhere else now.

I guess the point of this story is that you can't plan for things.  I mean you can, but it probably won't work out that way.  Things will change, you will change and you will find out new things about yourelf that you ever would have thought you were capable of.  Your dreams won't come true, and I thank God that mine haven't.  Because my dreams of yesterday would have led me somewhere else today.  And that would just be tragic.

The Catch-up Quickie

No, I am not dead, I did not lose my computer on my way up to Boston, and I did not forget the password to my blog.  So there is really no reason as to why I have given up writing for the past three or four months.  I simply just got busy!


But I have returned, with plenty of ammo to last me until my next slump.  From food to landscapes to really crazy people, I've been experiencing some pretty wonderful things that I absolutely cannot wait to tell you about. Here is a quick run through that will bring us up-to-date on my travels (in semi chronilogical logical order):

*On my way here, I found that the farther you go North, the faster and more erratic people drive.
Virginia- people drive like turtles.
Pennsylvania- people drive like Speed Racer.
Boston- people drivers are replaced by bats out of hell and allowed to do whatever they want on the road.

*I arrive in Boston carrying nothing but a trash bag full of clothes and a bookcase full of books...That's...it.

*My new home for the next month was very old and scary.  There was only one roommate to be found.  She is awesome and has the cutest puppy.

*I buy an air mattress that has a hole in it. (Hole is undetected upon purchase).

* I find a boyfriend.  This is him.

*Second day:  I walk up and down the street until I find a part time job- barista at a crepe cafe in Davis Square.  SWEET.

*1 month later:  I really freaking hate my part time job as a barista in a crepe cafe.  NOT SO SWEET.

*I find a full time job with my English degree at a university in Cambridge (no, not THAT university) in Accounts Receivable.

*I quit my part timer to go to the beach with said boyfriend (and I am starting my new full time job).

*Did I mention I found  full time job?

*I find a new apartment with 4 girls who all happen to be lesbians.  THEY ARE AWESOME.  Expect many blogs about our late night Tetris tournaments and new bars and restaurants we like to try out.

*Oh, and of course...I fell in love with Boston.  Here are some reasons why...

So there ya go...  I can't wait to tell you all about my adventures :)

The Problem with Not Being Omnipresent

One question has been buzzing around inside my head like a fly that has is stuck in between the blinds and the window...How the heck do you find a job in a city that you don't yet live in? My original plan was to move up to Boston (which I have unhealthily began to fantasize as a land of wine, honey, and Gerard Butler look alikes) and find one as soon as I could. But the closer I have gotten to the moving date, the more paranoid I have become that I am going to get up there and be the next victim of unemployment. Does anyone have any suggestions? Has anyone made a big move like this and waitied until they got there to find a job?

PLUS, please excuse the sloppiness of the blog. I am currently trying to tidy it up and give it that, "New age flapper/sophisticated scholar look." I am also taking suggestions on that. :)

The Southern Peach goes to Beantown

So I have finally decided that yes. I am definitely moving to Boston, which is, as my favorite time-traveling movie crush Marty McFly would say, "heavy." For a Steel Magnolia such as myself, who has never lived more than two hours from my hometown in South Carolina, going up North is the equivalent to a mortal sin to some of my friends and family. But I was never one to stick to the rules all the time. And I have had the distinct pleasure of reading two great biographies that have fueled the rebel that lies within: Savage Beauty (Edna St. Vincent Millay) by Nancy Milford and Anita Loos by Gary Carey.

Edna St. Vincent Millay has been one of my favorite writers since I took a class in college called "Sophisticated Ladies." The tongue in cheek title of the class should have been a hint to me what an amazing class this would be, but at the time, I knew nothing about 1920's women writers. Millay was one of the first that we covered, and I fell in love with her the moment I read "First Fig."

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light.

How could you not like a lady who writes something so sexy and intelligent in a time when women were not supposed to be either. She helped bring both concepts in vogue in the late 1900's. She was always fighting some establishment in her life: loneliness, marriage, sexism, political stances, etc. She marched in for the lives of two prisoners in front of the Boston capital. She made a marriage work that no one thought would be possible. She wan the Pulitzer Prize, something no woman had accomplished before. She challenged some of the leading poets, including herself, on a regular basis. She was a genius who let drugs destroy her mind. But for many years, her light did give "a lovely light."

Anita Loos was not the genius the Millay was, but my goodness, she was just as sassy! She wrote one of my favorite books Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She also wrote dozens of plays and movies (many things for Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks, The Talmadge Sisters, etc.) She was a cutthroat business woman and as witty as they come. Unfortunately, she was not as dominant in her personal life. There were several times I wanted to reach through the pages, and time, and shake Loos. "Leave the crummy mooch!" But every leading lady must have a fatal flaw, and like most of her heroines in the plays and movies she wrote, that flaw was the unexplainable love for a scoundrel. Which, coincidentally, has always been my problem.

I related to both of these women on different levels, but I think it's time to take another page out of their books. I need to do something daring. And I think that that something is waiting for me in Boston. The Sweet Tea Queen is coming to town!