/reader

I'm also building the new online portal for my tutoring company, a process which is occasionally rewarding but mostly frustrating. I'm frustrated right now because the task I'm working on right now is far more complex than the spec initially made it out to be: I have to do all sorts of funky SQL joins to get data from different places and my brain does not currently have the bandwidth to support tasks of that magnitude.

The sheer amount of things I have to do in the coming months weighs on my mind. On top of moving into a new apartment, the very day I start my new job I'll begin teaching writing bootcamps in the evenings from 8 to 10 PM. I'll teach every day from mid-June to around mid-July. The schedule gives me Saturday nights off, but I won't be able to rest then either because that's when my private lessons are. Three of them, back to back from 7 to 10 PM.

I know I could back out of this arrangement now but I won't. Selling an entire month's worth of evenings for two months of rent is too good a deal for me to pass up. But needing the money and even wanting to teach doesn't make me feel any less tired thinking about it.

My mom's been going around and telling all of her three friends about my new job, who have in turn texted me to congratulate me. She's also trying to take me out to celebrate tonight. I'm not really in the mood. I just want to lay down and dissociate for a while. (And eventually catch up on all the work staring at me.)

I must have looked annoyed because my mom came around after an hour and even invited some friends (hers) over to celebrate and play cards with us in the evening. My parents' happiness dwarfs mine — I've never seen them so relieved — and makes me feel strange. I can't fully enjoy the good news like they can because I'm constantly aware of all the ways a job can go bad. I'll try to get them out here so I can see what's bothering me.

I'm worried about being able to do the work. This is by far the biggest concern, after the dumpster fire of my last job. I've never been happier to leave coding behind, but it's not like I know anything about communications either. What if I'm terrible at it?

I'm comforted by the fact that 1. this is a genuinely an entry level job (I was very open about having absolutely no professional writing experience) and 2. that most of my friends think that I'll be good at writing emails. I hope they're right. I can't bear to think what I'll do if I can't make this work.

I'm worried about the culture. As one of my friends texted me yesterday, "law firms are known to be toxic." I've already met one of what she called "really stuck-up higher ups" in the interview process. Culture isn't as big a concern as the work is because I recognize it's largely out of my control, but it's still an important one. What made me most miserable about my last job was the people (in particular, my old boss), more than my hatred for the work. If it weren't for that I probably would have stayed there even longer.

I'm worried about moving to New York. Longtime readers know I love New York. I'm very happy in the city. But I struggle to stay as healthy there as I do in the suburbs. There's less green space (especially public) and so much more good food everywhere. I don't want to gain weight and get out of shape but I haven't figured out how to avoid those things so far.

I'm worried about having a roommate. I'll be moving in to a friend's apartment. Fortunately for me he's very clean and has already hosted me countless times, but it's been a long time since I lived in such close quarters with someone that's not family. Repeated exposure can wear out any friendship. I hope this one not only survives, but comes out stronger for it.

I'm worried about money. My salary is less than two-thirds what I used to make. My mom keeps treating this like a death sentence. Earlier she looked me in the eyes with a concerned look and said, Call home if you run out of money, okay? I can be frugal when need be, so I'm certain it's not as bad as she makes it out to be. That said, I make less hourly than I do teaching, so I'll probably have to sacrifice a good deal of my free time tutoring for the spare change. It's not the worst thing in the world, I suppose.

we will miss this when it ends...

I'd never done a writing assessment before and was honestly quite nervous going into it. Would my lack of professional writing experience be exposed? I needn't have worried. Even after not writing anything for several days I felt so much more comfortable writing and editing plain English than I ever had coding in any language. Writing doesn't carry any of the anxiety I've accumulated from years of failing coding challenges.

After a rather grueling wait (including multiple cruelly teasing emails and delays) the recruiter called me back today and offered me the job. I can't decide if I'm more excited or relieved. I'm trying to rein in my excitement, because who knows if I'll like this job? But I can't deny the joy I feel to have an opportunity to move to New York, to try a new career path, to escape and live on my own after so many years at home with my parents.

The reason I haven't written all these days is because I was afraid I'd jinx the outcome by writing about it. I can't write here without spilling every little detail of my life, so I refrained from writing entirely. I sorely missed the catharsis and creative act of journaling and am so glad to be back. It's silly of me to entertain such superstitions, and landing this offer will likely only worsen this irrationality.

I came across this tweet the other day while obsessing over that Joan Didion excerpt I posted and I absolutely adore it.

"Because every day is all there is." — Joan Didion, to a New York Times reporter, explaining why she put her "good" china to routine, everyday use. It has always been one of my favorite Didion lines, though it never appeared in any of her writings.

It reminds me of that Annie Dillard quote¹ and sums up my writing/blogging philosophy nicely. What better way is there to live than to treat the humble day as all there is?

We went three and four afternoons a week, sat on folding chairs in the darkened Quonset hut which served as a theater, and it was there, that summer of 1943 while the hot wind blew outside, that I first saw John Wayne. Saw the walk, heard the voice. Heard him tell the girl in a picture called War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, “at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow.”

As it happened I did not grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I wait to hear.

JOAN DIDION, "John Wayne: A Love Song," in Slouching Towards Bethlehem