Six and a half years ago, 21-year-old Robyn faced a very important decision. She was living in New York -- a town she had been passionately in love with before she ever loved a boy -- and was facing a bit of a crisis. Her boyfriend of three years was moving to Washington, and as at this point she was all but certain they were going to get married and have dinette sets and stuff, it seemed logical to follow him. But she loved NYC. What would she choose? She decided to choose love over geography, and felt really stinkin' noble about it at the time.
StupidStupidStupidStupidStupid.
Now, to be fair, Washington hasn't been all bad. I did luck out big time in finding an internship willing to take me on and give me a crash course in international development, advocacy, public relations, media cultivation, and general do-gooding, and I've been able to make a nice living saving the world. And I have some fantastic friends who mean the world to me.
But DC and I never took to each other. Ever. I missed New York since the day I left it. I missed the neighborhoods, the history, the museums, the parks, the people, the bagels... Every visit felt like coming home, and every time I left I felt like I had to be pried off the subway. And the relationship...well...hey, at least I got a dinette set out of the deal. And the less said about the follow-up relationship the better. Mostly for legal reasons. And I wish I were kidding.
Sooooo, this year, I decided this longstanding wrong needed to be righted. It's taken me the better part of eight months, and some inglorious incidents up and down the eastern seaboard, but this week I signed an offer letter for position from no less than the ACLU's headquarters in New York City. As in the American Civil Liberties Union. As in I don't need to craft a 30-second elevator speech to tell people where I work anymore. As in it's gonna be intense, and it's gonna kick my ass, and I am so freakin' stoked I can't stand it.
And if that wasn't enough, I had seven days to lead a do-or-die mission to rent an apartment before a previously scheduled trip to Maine. Most of the mission looked bleak, as many of the apartments viewed on Craigslist were not quite as livable as advertised. But the very last place was a sun-drenched, one-bedroom, riverside little beauty that could conceivably fit my most important furniture (including the goddamn dinette set). It's an un-air conditioned fifth-floor walkup, and just a bit outside the price range I had originally set, but the Manhattan neighborhood is to die for, the view is gorgeous, and I'm over the freakin' moon.
So I have less than a week to pack up my entire life, wrap up the DC job, and re-locate. But after this year, that will be a piece of cake. I don't want to be too presumptuous here, but it looks like things are dangerously close to falling into place. Whaddya know.
Posts
