Happy anniversary.

My college gallery opening had a program of sorts, where all the graduates gave a short bio and quote. The end of mine was "It's been a good run - here's to the rest of it."

This time one year ago, I was zipping up my suitcases. I had to wake up early to catch my 6 a.m. flight out of Dayton, so I'm pretty sure I tried to go to bed early. I didn't take much. I assumed I'd just buy everything again when I got to San Francisco.

I didn't have a job. I didn't have an apartment. Thanks to an overlooked exit counseling session, I didn't even have my real diploma in my hand yet. The $1500 I had received three months earlier as a combination of graduation presents had long run out and I was living my life on a slowly dwindling credit card limit. I owned a house, I had a life, and now I was going across the country on a one way plane ticket in two suitcases. I don't do terrified very well, but I managed to figure it out for that day. It wasn't exciting. It wasn't exhilarating. It was awful.

So I arrived in San Francisco and I settled down to do whatever it is you do when you're 23 and you just gave your life up. I found a one month sublet for $600. It was 10x10 and couldn't hardly fit my bike and didn't have a kitchen. It had a bay window that looked onto 18th street and the sun woke me up every morning. I needed that bay window. I didn't have much to get me up in the mornings and having a natural, warm alarm clock will always be my favorite memory of San Francisco.

I broke my collar bone 18 days after moving here. It pissed me off. I had no money and no future and now I couldn't even put my own shirt on. Ten days later I scored a $700 freelance job that paid my rent for October in the new apartment that Harry and I found. It was the first money I made since graduation. I paid my rent, bought a burrito, and stored the remaining $150 away in the hopes that it would feed me for a month.

Things got better. I got another freelance contract, one that I still hold today with an incredible company that was really the first to take an interest in me out here. I took a job for a few months in Silicon Valley that just wasn't right for me and learned a few huge lessons about how I wanted my professional life to start. I returned to freelancing and have managed to make a pretty strong go at it. I've been overbooked for a month and a half and while it would be inappropriate to say that this might be things turning around, let's just say I'm hopeful.

It has been a heartbreaking year in a lot of ways. Say what you will about personal growth and learning, but none of it comes all that easy. I have not fallen in love with San Francisco the way everyone else seems to, but I'm slowly making my place here. I have a favorite bar. I have a couple of favorite restaurants. I've been car-free for over a year and have managed to do all the traveling I need to on a bicycle, something I wouldn't have ever believed was possible a year and a half ago.

I miss everybody and I miss everything. Being on the west coast when everyone you love is at least two time zones away is awful. I've become a much more internal person since moving here, and perhaps that's okay. I'm a little smarter, a little more calculated, a little more careful. But at the same time, it's the most unrestrained I've ever been. There's nothing glamorous about this life - it's a whole lot of Tecate on our roof deck, and a whole lot of $5 burritos because they can last me for two meals - but it is a life that's completely fluid and unpredictable and it's exactly what I needed to do.

San Francisco, I've been real hard on you this year. You are expensive and a little hard to get around and I'm pretty negative about you sometimes. So here's to all the Tecate on the roof deck. Here's to freezing at night because it's California and I'm too stubborn to wear a jacket somewhere that sounds like it should be warm. Here's to appreciating every single sunny day at Dolores Park, to burritos the size of my face, to street food regardless of whether it's made by 30 year residents selling bacon-wrapped hot dogs or new residents with push carts. Here's to your ridiculously beautiful neighborhoods, your ocean, your bay, your wine country.

Harry's quote was "This is it, kids, we're going to live forever. We're part of the story now." Breaking a collarbone 18 days after you throw caution to the wind and move across the country discounts your invincibility a little bit, but I think I'll hold on to it for a little while longer. It's been a good run, San Francisco. Here's to the rest of it.

Settling in.

This blog has gotten a little neglected, and I've been trying to figure out the reasons. I have lots of things to talk about. I have ample time to write. But everything I consider writing feels like it belongs somewhere else, so my personal tumblr has been getting more use than this guy. 

The reason is simple: San Francisco, I think I finally get you.

In eight days, I will celebrate my six month anniversary of moving here. It's a little presumptuous to say that I think I belong here, or that I have seen everything the city has to offer - all of that is far from it. I still sort of feel like an outsider. I still have a hard time figuring out things to do when people come to visit me. But the things that once baffled me no longer do. I'm settling into a routine and I'll be damned if I'm not almost convinced that I might be here this time next year. 

I became a huge advocate for cycling. I continued to get healthy. I broke a collar bone. I found a favorite taqueria. I found a favorite bar. (Multiple candidates were considered on both fronts.) I know my neighborhood. I found my park. (It wasn't hard to find.) I got a job in Silicon Valley and learned how to bitch about the train. (This is a throwback from the NYC days, just slight adapted.) I learned how to circumvent the hills I couldn't climb and learned how to climb the ones that I originally couldn't.

San Francisco, you're all right. I get a little nervous when The Roommate starts talking about being here forever and ever, because I don't think I necessarily will be. You are a good fit for me right now, though, and I'm starting to get you figured out. 

My life is pretty routine. I wake up and jump on one of two bikes, depending on if I want a slow and easy cruise or if I'm willing to suck up the road jitters of aluminum in exchange for the ridiculous amount of speed that my real road bike allows me. I take either the 7:59 or 8:59 bullet train from 4th and King to Mountain View. I work at my motion graphics job, I have lunch on Castro Street, I burn down Villa in the afternoon to try and make my 5:37 train. (I get there at 5:32 and pray to God that I'm overestimating the number of cyclists waiting in front of me, more accurately.) I get off at 4th and meet The Roommate. We'll probably stop at Safeway before departing so we can get groceries for dinner. We'll ride back to the mission; I'll get pissed off on 9th street because someone honked at me. We might just go straight home. We might stop at Inner Mission to have a beer (or three) and a game of pool (or ten). Eventually we'll be home, and we'll make dinner, and then maybe we'll just stay in or maybe we'll go to Make Out Room (if it's a Tuesday) or maybe we'll go to any one of the handful of dive bars that we love because we can play pool or cards without anyone hassling us. The next day we'll wake up and do it all over again. 

None of this makes for a particularly amazing blog, however. I can't believe I've been here six months. In some ways it feels like I've been here forever, but it mostly feels like I just got here. I don't know when that new city smell wears off, but I still regularly find myself using "I'm not from here" as an excuse. I still don't feel like I've committed to being here - it feels like I could get up and leave at any time - but I certainly don't have any actual plans to go, and I can't figure out somewhere else I'd rather be, so I guess that's something. It's been an interesting ride so far. Here's to the next six months.

Being unemployed.

People, let me tell you this - I can be a lot to handle. I am wordy. I get really, really obsessive about everything. I am occasionally an emotional train wreck. My friends are all incredibly good people, however, and they come with their tradeoffs as well, so it's okay that I'm like this and I don't feel quite so bad about making people put up with my shit because, well... let's just say it's a give and take sort of relationship. You know the one time people can't handle me, though?

When I'm bored.

I am a high-stress, constantly moving sort of person. I also really like to bitch and whine about it, as if this isn't the sort of thing that I live for. So, for example, I would spend the last three weeks of my school quarters complaining about projects, not eating, not sleeping, telling everyone around me that I couldn't wait until it was all over. Then, like clockwork, two days into my one week break? I don't have anything to do, and this is stupid.

I have been without anything to do since June 14th, the day I graduated from college. I'm pushing three months of unemployment. This is the longest I've ever been without something to cling to or something to look forward to. The last time it got close to this bad was the summer of 2003.

I moved from one midwestern city to another, but the two cities are hugely different. I was subletting an apartment - starting June 13th, coincidentally enough - from a frat boy who was going somewhere else for the summer. I had the attic of a three story house to myself and paid $250 a month for it. Out of pure convenience, I paid him the full $750 up front and had a place to live for the summer. I had a boyfriend who actually had things to do during the day, which left me in my sublet, unemployed and looking for a part-time job. This was before I ever had a credit card, so my bills were completely non-existent, and I was living off of going-away money from relatives. Life was affordable and okay. However. I had absolutely, positively nothing to do. This was before I realized the hobbies and pastimes that at least get me through a few hours now. This was the summer I learned to sleep.

Boyfriend gets out of class at 4:50? You better believe I can sleep in till 2, wake up, microwave an artichoke, eat it with some mustard and mayonnaise, and be back in bed at 2:30, awaiting his phone call to wake me up at 5. I was sleeping easily 16+ hours every single day, and I was good at it.

Now, I live in an apartment with three giant windows that face east, so I wake up at 6:30. By 9, I am bored. The Roommate doesn't get off work until 6. The ability to entertain myself is getting a little harder each day. I know, I know - one of the greatest cities in the country, get out, explore, blah blah blah. It's hot. I'm not used to riding a bike this hard all the time. I'm tired. Also, lazy. And I'd like to be within 8 feet of my laptop at all times so that I know when a new job has come up on craigslist.

But I am really, really bored. My favorite author released a book recently that I hadn't picked up yet, and it will be finished within the hour. I managed to convince myself to get out of the house, so I went and sampled some absolutely fabulous Mexican cuisine - and Mexican bottled coke. Oh, God. Highlight of my day for sure. But now I'm back in my apartment, doing whatever it is that unemployed people do. Perhaps I should get out more and explore the area, but I legitimately feel guilty if I'm not spending as much time as I can trolling the internet for jobs. 

So tell me, friends, what do YOU do to get through those times when you seriously have nothing better to do? And if it could cost me a freakishly small amount of money, all the better.

Introduction.

I'm terrible at these sorts of things, and I always think they're really lame, but for lack of a better first post, here we go.

On August 27th, 2008, I bought a one-way plane ticket to SFO. The ticket was for September 1st. I have absolutely no job, no savings, and didn't have an apartment until September 3rd.

Why San Francisco? Let's start with the cliches and then move on to reasons that might actually be convincing. First of all, I'm a recent college graduate who wasn't having any luck finding a job in the city I lived in. So, yes. I'm one of those stories: graduated college, "moved west in search of opportunities". Second of all, it seemed a logical choice for me. I have friends in the Bay area, I'm a cyclist, and I simply needed something new. I made the decision that I was unhappy with my previous life and I needed to make a change. When I started searching for plane tickets, I found one for $143 that was five days away. All the surrounding tickets were more expensive. September 1st, indeed. 

So I packed up everything I could fit into two checked bags (thanks, $75 luggage set from Kohl's that has moved me across the country three times!) and two carry-ons (thanks, Timbuk2 bags, for already making me look like I live in San Francisco!), and got on a 5:53 a.m. flight. Nine hours later, I was in San Francisco, homeless, jobless, and with no prior experience in the city save 32 hours with my boyfriend back in the spring of 2003. 

I'm a motion graphics designer. The easy question now is "Why not L.A.?" The answer is relatively simple. If I lived in Los Angeles, I'd probably have to kill myself. I just dislike it and really didn't want to live there. In terms of making decisions to change my entire life because I was unhappy, I probably should select a city I actually, you know, want to live in.

How do I know I want to live in San Francisco if I've already admitted I don't know anything about it? It's kind of a hunch. Lots of friends with lots of experiences here, people I trust, who tell me it might be a city for me. I'm a New York girl. I'm a little high-strung. The other day, flying down Mission, someone started to open their car door and I screamed a string of obscenities that would hardly be out of the ordinary in New York. This is not quite part of the San Francisco culture. I'm trying to adapt. I'm hoping that I become less high-strung as the days go on. (Getting a job would probably REALLY ease that stress. I'm talking to you, Bay area.)

Now that we've got the reasons, here's a little more about me. As previously stated, I'm a designer, predominantly 3D animation but with some 2D mixed in on the side. I'm a newborn cyclist. I moved from a city that's decidedly not cyclist-friendly, but with the college graduation and whatnot, paying $4+ a gallon for gas didn't make any sense. I was friends with a lot of cyclists. I spent $75 on a bike instead of a tank of gas and never looked back. That story may be discussion for another time.

I'd like to refrain from getting too personal here, mostly because I'm looking for jobs and I know how easy it is to find people on the internet. It's not that I'm attempting to create some sort of secret identity, just that I'd like to be able to actually document the journey of moving to a completely new city with 150 pounds of luggage, no job and no home - and the job search is a very big part of that. Networking is everything. While I have no plans to slam some company that rejects me, you better believe I'll have words for it if I go on the worst interview ever. I am also friends with a number of people in my exact situation, and I have no interest in naming them by names, because they'll get hit in google searches too, and I don't need their potential employers knowing that I watched them pass out on a pool table the night before.

So, welcome. Hopefully this'll be a fun ride. (With no more flat tires, because I already did that yesterday, on a newly-acquired bicycle.)