on change and changing
I guess now that I’m thirty, I’ve got to start acting like an honest-to-goodness grownup.
… pfft, this blows.
Anyway, thirty has been pretty okay so far. I finally have a stable job, and it pays most of the bills. Steve, my boyfriend, helped me draft a budget at the start of 2012, which is very strange to me. I barely make enough to get by, so why should I budget anything? I mean, I know that “responsibility” is the answer, but my goodness, I’m trying to have some fun for once in my life, and responsibility doesn’t really fit into that.
But does responsibility fit in with where I want to go in my life?
I’m getting to the point where I know I want to move. Portland makes me happy, and not just because of Steve, but because I truly enjoy it there. I’ve never lived in a big city before, and I’m itching to do so. Portland is a wonderful choice, too, since it’s got many of the amenities of a metropolis but the comforts of a smaller area. Portland, to me, is Olympia ran through a copier, blown up as big as you could.
The problem is that Portland is, well, not Olympia! I do love Oly to death, and I could probably be okay sticking around here, but my main concern is that I now work for the state government. I’ll be out of probation in two months and then I will be pretty much set, and then I can look into transferring down to Vancouver or something. Oh, but balls, all the good jobs are here because Olympia’s the state capital! And satellite offices tend to be lightly staffed! aaaaugh
The benefits and hours are great when working for Washington State, but I worry that I will be trading in security and comfort for my dream. Honestly, if I were to be completely practical, I would make that sacrifice. But is it what I want? Will I be happy? I guess if I lived in Seattle, I could always commute down to Oly for work, but there no way I could do a four hour commute from Portland every day.
Let’s see, what else happened in the year-plus that I fell off the earth?
Lorelei turned ten! She’s such a big kid now, and really starting to become a handful. I made a bunch of new friends, went to San Francisco and the Oregon Coast and PAX, hosted my first Thanksgiving dinner, and began to read a lot more. Some sad things happened as well — my grandmother passed away, I had to part ways with a few friends, health issues abound — but all in all, life has been pretty okay to me.
Hopefully this trend will continue on.
