Curveball…

I have news.

You know how I’ve been unemployed for like…kind of awhile now?

A couple months ago I was feeling angry and bitter about it and I told V that maybe I would have better luck finding a job somewhere else; maybe Madison is too small, maybe my reputation has been maligned so much that nobody here will hire me. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself exactly, just trying to look at the situation realistically. So V, being the supportive partner that he is, started looking elsewhere for a job of his own. Over the last two months he’s had a lot of semi-stressful interviews with a lot of different companies kind of all over the place. Then Amazon invited him for an in-person interview in Seattle a couple weeks ago; we went. They offered him a pretty sweet job and he took it and…we are moving to Seattle.

Still having trouble recognizing that as reality, even just typing it: we are moving.

Anyone who knows me knows I love Madison and I love Wisconsin – like hello, what did I name my blog? It’s part of my identity. And I love my family and my friends almost to the point of pathology. So while this might’ve been a no-brainer opportunity for some people, it wasn’t for me. We have such roots here with my family and our friends. We have this lovely home. When we bought it two years ago, moving to another city was nowhere on our radar. We both had good jobs that we more or less enjoyed. But a lot has changed. I don’t have a job, or prospects of a job, and six months of that has worn pretty thin. Much as it pains me to say, a lady can only take so many walks.

So as I’ve told everyone that I’ve discussed this with so far, I’m a huge mixed bag of emotions. Happy, excited, proud, scared, anxious, sad, apprehensive, curious. Honestly sometimes the negative emotions have been stomping their way to the forefront more often than I’d like. In that spirit of combating that, here’s a little list of things I am looking forward to:

• not shoveling snow
• not having a Cold War with my neighbor over our lawn
• being able to go to Elliott Bay Book Company ANYTIME I WANT
  • sooo many awesome lady writers from Seattle: Ijeoma Oluo, Lindy West, Jill Filipovic, Carrie Brownstein! (I’m not going to link them all to Goodreads because I’m lazy but you should read all their shit)
• better shopping in general
• more racial diversity (which I know Seattle is not exactly known for, but it’s certainly more diverse than here…#perspective)
• those gorgeous views

Another time I’ll make a list of things I’m anxious about. Won’t that be fun! I can guarantee it will be highly detailed and really pathetic.

The thing is, everyone else has already done this. My parents did this (Missouri and Michigan). My closest friends did this (all over the country and all over the damn world). Hell, my brother did this (Florida). It’s usually when people are in their 20s, I guess, that they venture out to wherever they fancy. I didn’t. I don’t know exactly why I didn’t. If you’d asked me when I was 16 what the next decade of my life would hold, I certainly wouldn’t have said “only leaving Wisconsin for vacations”. I mean at 16 I had no concept of things like tuition or literally anything and thought I was going to go east for college at Sarah Lawrence (because Julia Stiles wanted to go there so bad in 10 Things I Hate About You and she was everything to me). But what I’m trying to say is, I didn’t do it then, so if I don’t now…when will I? When I’m like…retired? Silly, everyone knows millennials don’t get to retire.

It’ll be an absolutely bananas next couple of months. Definitely gonna lose my shit more than once. For sure. But I’m gonna make it.