The Bermuda Triangle

So, I haven't posted a lot lately because much like Adina, I've been busy. Busy with life and busy with attempts at making life-changes. I haven't really wanted to write about anything, because in the past I've gotten really excited about big changes, and then they haven't worked out. And then everyone who knew would ask me what happened and I'd have to explain over and over again why I was not currently practicing medicine, living in New York, or training helper monkeys. Pretty much taking inventory of my broken dreams. I've stayed in Alabama, I'm working in a job I enjoy but with crazy management and little chance at advancement any time in the near future, and I don't currently own any monkeys. Also, my boyfriend lives 3,000 miles away. The situation is *not* ideal.

But I have been working to rectify that.

When I first got out of graduate school, I applied for tons of jobs for which I was not qualified in a desperate attempt to flee the state that holds people in its clutches until they die or all their teeth fall out. Whichever comes first. Alabama has never been very high on my list of places to live. Granted, I live in Birmingham, and it's really not terrible. There are lots of intelligent, well-meaning people here...it just seems as though nothing much ever changes. Sure, newer Wal-Marts crop up now and again, but other breakthroughs are few and far between. I do a job that I love in a place that sets the benchmark for how poorly said job can be accomplished in the nation. And I have the best friends I can imagine ever having...and I will miss them terribly.

Because I'm moving on. Today I accepted a new job. This new job entails doing only the parts of the job that I truly love, and none of the crap that I hate. I will not be zipping around in rocket-propelled paper towel tubes in the middle of the night. I will not be sitting in an office all day doing nothing. I will not be wasting my talents spending my day playing the "see if you can get a coworker to stare at someone's broke-over ass by pointing at it and saying hey is that yours?" game. (Btw, I totally suck at that game.) Instead I will be doing clinical management. I will be writing research papers that will hopefully be published in clinical journals. I will be taking call from home. I will be working with an organization that leads the nation in my field. And I will be doing a ton less work for a ton more money.

I will also be living within a 50 mile radius of my boyfriend. Because my new job is in Boston. I've already gone apartment hunting, and have hopefully found a place (assuming said place wasn't rented in the 3 weeks it's taken for me to get this job solidified.) I cannot describe to you how I feel about this. I will be living in Boston. An honest-to-God city. With people. And little blue penguins. And mass transit. And itty bitty expensive apartments (wtf Boston?) And baseball. Lots of baseball. :)

I've been waiting for this for a really long time. And now that it's happened, it's incredibly surreal. I can't imagine not living in Alabama. I can't imagine not being able to hop in the car and go hang out with my family. I can't imagine not being around for the next crazy-ass thing that C does and not having P come and fall asleep at my apartment after her exams. I'm going to miss the terrible food at El Cazador with R and S (although I'll miss the margaritas more.) And I really will have to pinch myself when seeing Tom doesn't include changing planes in Baltimore. But I'm excited to have my friends visit. I'm excited that I'll be able to be the reason that my sisters hop on an airplane for the first time in a decade (and for Jo, the first time ever.) Most of all, I'm excited to start a path in my life that isn't a compromise. That isn't short-term. That isn't just something I'm doing until something better happens.

I'm starting fresh. I'm going new places. I'm meeting new people. Oh, and in my new job I will occasionally have to traverse the Bermuda Triangle. (No joke.)

Welcome to my new life. It's going to kick ass.