Dear Friend,
I like to begin my emails to you like we are in the middle of a conversation. What will NY152 say today I wonder?
Oh, sorry, was I typing out the exact text from You’ve Got Mail again? It’s just a little problem I have sometimes, I’m taking pills and having injections (that was from Notting Hill-I told you it’s a problem!)
I’ve decided that now is a good time for an update on how things are going. I’ve been planning this for a while, but it just so happens that today (as I write this) is the exact three-month anniversary of my last day at my job. How serendipitous! (I promise I will try and stop referencing rom coms now…)
Side note: I didn’t really need to put another GIF here but it’s my sister’s favourite one from Serendipity and since we didn’t get to go into the Waldorf Astoria elevators on our NYC trip, I thought I’d put it in just for her!
The past three months have been pretty crazy but really pretty awesome. The first month was a lot of trying to figure out my new routine and freaking out about my scary new life every so often and getting used to not really speaking to people every day (except for the cashier at No Frills!) and those all took some time. I ran a lot and slept a lot and caught up on some of the TV I had been missing. I’d say that the hardest thing in the first little while was responding to people when they asked how it was going. I didn’t really have anything to update them on, so it was “good?” with the question mark in there for sure. I’d joke about having spare time and that I still had some time before needing a part time job at Starbucks and that usually was enough to get us past the question. Sometimes people would (and still do) ask me I missed my job and the truth is it doesn’t even feel like it happened. Even in the first month when it hadn’t been that long, and I still didn’t have a real routine, it felt like this had always been my life and the work and life I had before that was just some thing that happened a long time ago, not a job I did for seven years up until the third week of January. It’s hard to explain but I feel a sign that I made the right choice.
Right around my one-month anniversary of leaving things started to happen. I was the successful applicant for a social media part time job and I also got a contract job via some friends. It was a bit crazy starting off the new SM job and working long hours for the contract job at the same time, but things sorted themselves out. The weirdest thing about this situation is that the contract job was actually biology related. I was using my degree! Such a rarity! It was a great opportunity to use the skills I’ve had for so long that I didn’t expect to ever use again. Just goes to show you that you never know where things are going.
In the last month or so I’ve really found my routine. I have a schedule and a plan and many many to do lists and goals and things are going great! I went on two mini vacations and one longer one which were all fantastic and nice “breaks” and I am excited to report that in the last few weeks I have gotten a couple of more social media contracts! Things are looking pretty good. I’ve got lots of great work that I’m excited to tackle and I’m proud of the work I’ve done and the content I’ve created in the last three months. It’s kind of crazy that this has worked out so far but it’s also kind of awesome.
PS: this is a paragraph I wrote when I came up with the idea for this blog a month ago. It was during one of the less great times, right before my vacation, so I had lots to do and was definitely more stressed about things than I am now. It was great to look back on today and see where I came from and to remember how short a time it’s been since my life changed:
I often feel like I don’t know where this is going, and that I need to make a long-term plan but I’m getting at better at telling myself to cool it. It’s only been two months and so far, you’re doing it. It is working, you are supporting yourself in this position and that was the plan. Keep on keeping on
as always love the movie references (ps I’m used to it) great read and great job putting yourself out there!