after a sunny afternoon stroll around beomeo, an american lunch (in celebration of the 4th), and a shared iced coffee, we plotted and planned until our heads were about to explode.
but still, the prospects were looking a little dim. transfering chris’ degree to a different university just wasn’t going to work out, thanks to budget cuts in the csu and a few other timing hurdles.
but one thing is for sure: we are moving to san francisco.
(happy dance!)
we’re just not exactly sure when.
(humph)
also, i should’ve been a scientist, according to this very exhaustive, yet predictable, career test i took online.
fancy graph exhibit a:
exhibit b:
i only have a few more months left in korea and while i’ve been stuck on the plan of going back to sacramento to wait for chris to graduate, i don’t want to use chris’ life plan as an excuse for not chasing my own dreams.
also, i’m sick of hating my job. i’m afraid of slipping into old patterns of lethargy and thinking of work as a dreaded obligation. i’m desperate to find my dream job. desperate enough to take online career tests.
like any hopeful sacramentan, the romantic idea of living in san francisco has been brewing in my head since day one (and by day one, i mean the day of my conception). much like the fresh batch of kombucha brewing away in my kitchen (and the fetus i once was), the idea has produced a living organism. a living, breathing body of possibility. a mushroom, a body, a refreshing glimpse of the future.
all it took was a little encouragement from a friend of a friend who came to visit these past few days from the bay area. he put it very bluntly: “there just isn’t much going on in sacramento.”
now, i love my little city and the people in it. but a girl’s gotta get up and go and i’m sick of futzing around waiting for my dream job to pop up out of the sky. i’m sick of hating mondays and of thinking and living paycheck-to-paycheck and working just to get by.
i have a degree. i have a working brain and body. i have hopes and thoughts and ideas and skills and words and experience and stuff. i’m young and i’m hungry and i’m rearin to go get what’s exciting about life. i don’t want to be a fridge repair person or a retail inventory auditor or a sales executive or a state department of personnel administrative assistant’s assistant #789. so, the job market in sacramento is pretty limiting for me. there are better options out there and i want to find them and get them. i want to spring board off this experience abroad, not land flat on my face exactly where i started.
but alas. i’ve reached the point in my life that i never actually thought i would reach. that is, i have this guy that i love and i want to keep him around. we’re hoping to stay together. so, where i go, he goes, and the like. sure, living apart for a little while here and there is one thing. but we’re talking a year and a half before he graduates. after nine months of living on different continents, i think we’ve reached our maximum long distance quota for the next really-long-time.
when you’re young and excited and free, how do you work this out? how do you open your arms to the opportunities around you (wherever they may take you) and still build and keep a lasting/meaningful relationship? it’s inevitable that both parties, at one point or another, will have to make different sacrifices and compromises. this is what i call a pickle.
so chris and i have chewed on said pickle for a while and this is what we’ve come up with so far: there are no such things as dill pickles in korea. no matter where you go, no matter how american the burger joint looks to be, no matter what kind of burger you order you will always get a sweet pickle on the side if you get any pickles at all. there are no crunchy, sour, snappy, zip-tastic kosher dills here.
but, there are lots of dill pickles and exciting career options for both of us in san francisco. options like teach for america, which has locations all over the bay, offer teaching programs that chris drools over. but in the meantime, chris wants to finish school and i support that. unfortunately, transferring just isn’t an option.
there’s also my own unfinished business in sacramento that should be cleaned up. there’s classes i wanna take, a few hard skills i wanna add to my resume, and some reporting opportunities i’d like to exhaust while they are still running.
the resulting compromise is this: spend a year readjusting to life in the u.s. (in sacramento) and filling in some practical holes in my education. i’m thinking graphic design, programming, and some poly sci classes to flesh out and refresh my background on california politics. i’ll spend time with my family. i’ll do some zuda. i’ll stay busy getting myself ready for san francisco and checking out job prospects.
when the year is through, chris will be just a few months away from graduation and i’ll be ready to compete seriously for my dream job in san francisco. in theory, my dabbling at the community college will give me an even clearer idea of what i’m looking for.
if everything goes as planned, i’ll make the move to the big city next summer and chris will follow shortly after. maybe he’ll teach for america. maybe he’ll work some other awesome job. but we’ll be together and we’ll conquer the city like the two fools that we are.
