Specifically, I finally graduated, and now I’m getting ready to embark on a more serious career, which is actually what sparked my interest in firing up WordPress again and putting down my thoughts. (Hi, HR people!) I won’t name names of places I’m applying for now, for various reasons, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at some of the responses I’ve received, and the salary offerings so far — as a journalism major, I thought my life path was pretty well set: do what I love, but be broke as hell doing it. I will say that there are specific areas I’m interested in (Boston, NYC, Seattle), and the most promising responses are out of Boston and NYC so far. No matter what career path I choose, I feel a bit like I’m delaying our dreams of making it to France eventually (which I think I mentioned in my last post), but I’m excited to take my first steps toward a meaningful career, and I think for now the benefits outweigh the negatives.

Last October, Ivona and I were on our honeymoon in Antalya, Turkey, sitting in a faux Parisian café in our resort, and we made the decision to move to France. We busted out the laptop, spent hours looking into everything from the cost of housing in Aix-en-Provence (the city I used to live in) to claiming my French citizenship. We had just had our second wedding in Bulgaria, and our first honeymoon now that we could finally afford one, and it seemed fitting that we made the decision to go there together, something we had talked about as early as our first date. It was a definite motivator to finish up this year and get my degree, and it was one of the things keeping me from shooting myself at the though of another 80-100 hours a week driving a cab this summer, but as we got closer to leaving Northampton to head to the Vineyard, and looked at the costs of going to France, I realized that working another menial labor job for three intense months with no semblance of a life was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Besides, with the US immigration process being the beast that it is, things will be easier later on for us anyway.

We’re coming up on our two year anniversary, which means that aside from the horrors of just dating me, she’s endured two years of matrimonial unbliss, including my video gaming habit and constant dick jokes (not really — I’m highbrow! No, really). I know everyone says it, but I really can’t believe it has been this long. Luckily for us, we still have the same opinion of marriage that we started out with: our relationship really hasn’t changed because of the rings on our fingers, and we don’t “feel” any more married than when it first happened — which is to say we still think getting married makes more of a difference to everyone around us than it does to us. Hell, we still sometimes feel weird referring to “my wife,” or “my husband.”

Anyway, sorry to make such a rambling, newsy update with not much substance, but I had to break back into it and I’m sure some family and friends who read this will want to get an update on what’s going on. Hopefully I’ll be back on a more regular update schedule, so keep checking.

Anyway, I was supposed to be graduating, and I sort of freaked about the fact that I didn’t have a job lined up, didn’t have any money, felt like I had no prospects, etc. Now that I feel like I have a little more time, I don’t feel the pressure quite as strong as I did before, but it’s still there and I can’t help but be stressed out about it, even if it’s a sort of subconscious, subtle stress. I don’t sit here freaking about it, but it’s always lingering in the back of my mind.

Currently, Ivona and I are searching for not one, but two apartments; one on the Vineyard for the summer so we can work down there, and one in Amherst for the fall; and we’re potentially buying a used car that we found a pretty good deal for. I’m looking forward to that change, of getting out of Amherst, of having some money again, and I feel like I’m sort of sitting here waiting for that to happen. I’m almost looking forward to the insane work schedule (probably going to average 14 hours a day, seven days a week), because I know I do best when I’m constantly moving and doing things. Part of what got me into this rut is sitting around so much and not doing anything. Vicious cycle. I’m in a rut because I’m not doing anything, and I’m not doing anything because I’m in a rut.

Alex and I had a brainstorming session a couple weeks ago to work on a screenplay. We’re developing a story I had very roughly sketched out, coupled with a general theme that has been bothering both of us lately and that Alex pretty neatly summed up with the term “quarter-life crisis.” We’ll see how it goes, if it does, but lately I’ve been more and more thinking that I want to write a version of the story on my own, maybe in book form. It has less to do with my feelings about how a screenplay written with my brother would turn out, because I think we could do some great work together, and more to do with the feeling that I really want to accomplish something on my own. I feel like not many things are turning out the way I want them to, and if I really want to be a writer, I need to take it seriously and do it.

I guess that’s the state of affairs right now in my world. If any of you have some great tip or secret to getting your life back on track, please share.