It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me at all to hear that the move to California has been difficult for me. If you read some of the back posts on this blog, you'll probably find me bemoaning my fate in one way or another in a lot of them. I hope that I don't come across as too whiny or negative in them, but the cross-country move to a city I'd never been to has been way harder than even I imagined it would be. I have some ideas about why this is true.
First, I still don't really have a job. I have a couple of part-time gigs, including the Bay Area Anthropology Examiner job I mentioned in the previous post (go to my page! Read my articles!), but none of them bring in enough money to live on. The girlfriend does, in fact, have a full-time job (with benefits! Yay, health insurance!), which means that we're probably not in any danger of living on the street anytime soon, but she hates the job. Really hates it. Comes home every day saying how much she hates it. But she can't quit it. How would we live if she did? It is one of the most frustrating things in the world to not be able to pull my own weight with household expenses and it's even worse because she doesn't even like the job.
Now, my girlfriend is an amazing woman and so she has been amazing about me not having a real job. I know that she wishes I did have one and I know that she's jealous that I get to stay home all day with the cats, but she is wonderful and supportive and understanding. I couldn't ask for anyone better, and that's the truth. So that makes things a little better.
The second thing that is really hard about this is how lonely it is. We don't really have any friends. Or, rather, we have two friends who live in Walnut Creek and a few more scattered throughout the Bay Area, but we don't have very many and they're mostly not available to hang out with. This is a completely different situation than any I have experienced my entire life. In college and grad school, I had bunches of friends. So many, in grad school in particular, that I would sometimes find myself with 3 or 4 options as to what to do on any given night. The girlfriend used to have to force me to stay home and hang out with her. Now, a busy weekend is seeing one friend. I haven't been to a party in months.
We haven't exactly been busting our butts to try to find new friends, I'll admit that, but I also think it's just way harder to find them out in the real world. In grad school, we were constantly surrounded by people who more-or-less shared our worldview, interests, and commitment to learning. Out of an academic context, those people have to be sought out, and the pool of people we interact with on a regular basis is much, much smaller. By the time the girlfriend gets home in the evenings, she's mostly too beat to want to go out and we can't really afford to do it on a regular basis, either. And so we aren't really meeting people and we are continuing to be pretty lonely.
This is not a woe-is-me moment, although it may sound like one. It took me a long time to understand why I was so miserable, so now I can start doing something about it. I am trying to make a little money doing freelance writing (if you know anyone who's looking for a writer, editor, or proofreader, send them my way!) and I'm finally getting a few students to tutor, so I'm feeling a little bit better. And, if I haven't said it loudly enough yet, my girlfriend really is the best in the world, which makes everything much better. With any luck, I'll have better news soon. Fingers crossed.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Updates
I have decided that to go along with the rebirth of my blog, I should do a makeover. This includes everything about the physical presentation of the blog, including the name. You'll note that I added the name of our second cat, Maeby, to the title, but I left Guliko in there, too, as a sort of memorial to an amazing cat.
The colors, fonts, background, and everything else look different, too, so if you're using an RSS feed like Google Reader, make sure you click through at some point and take a look.
Finally, I added the RSS feed of my Bay Area Anthropology Examiner feed to the right-hand column. This is a shameless attempt to drive up readership on that page and make me more money. I write about all kinds of interesting anthropology things that happen in the bay area and try to pull in national news now and then, so check it out.
I hope to be a little more consistent with updating the blog from now on, so come back and check it out!
The colors, fonts, background, and everything else look different, too, so if you're using an RSS feed like Google Reader, make sure you click through at some point and take a look.
Finally, I added the RSS feed of my Bay Area Anthropology Examiner feed to the right-hand column. This is a shameless attempt to drive up readership on that page and make me more money. I write about all kinds of interesting anthropology things that happen in the bay area and try to pull in national news now and then, so check it out.
I hope to be a little more consistent with updating the blog from now on, so come back and check it out!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
I'm baaaaack!
I began this blog with the ambition to write on it 2 or 3 times a week. I should have known that I would lose momentum. So that's what happened. We got involved in everyday life and I got tired, I guess. So here's the update on what's been going on, for the 2 or 3 of you out there who might still be listening.
1. The kittens came home. They are adorable. They're 6 months old now and getting huge, teething, yelling at us when we don't play with them every second of every day, and also sitting on our laps and sleeping on our feet and doing all kinds of cute stuff.
2. The girlfriend got a job at a start-up in the city. She was a temp for a long time and got hired on full-time in mid January. She does not like the job, but the pay is good and she (and I) got health insurance, including vision and dental. So you don't need to worry that we're going to be on the streets any time soon.
3. I got the job with the SAT prep company. It has not been a particularly successful thing for me, as I have only taught one weekend class and had one student to tutor. Not much money. I have had interviews for two different jobs, neither of which I got. I have another job interview on Friday, so keep your fingers crossed. I got the interview in one of those my girlfriend's friend's sister works for the company sort of scenarios. Okay, not "sort of" scenarios. That is the situation. Hopefully they'll hire me. I really want a job and money. And to leave the house on a more regular basis.
4. We have a lot more furniture now. Most of it was free, but there was the excitement of my first trip to IKEA to purchase a few things. Still, I would say that roughly 85% of the things we have in our house we got either from outside the dumpster in our apartment building or on freecycle, which is this mailing list where people offer things they're trying to get rid of and you can have them if you come and get them.
5. Actually, those are the highlights. We haven't made any friends or done anything particularly exciting, but we have had a few visitors and we are planning a trip to Boulder in two weeks to see some friends. Also, I'm hoping to defend my dissertation in April, so keep your fingers crossed on that...
1. The kittens came home. They are adorable. They're 6 months old now and getting huge, teething, yelling at us when we don't play with them every second of every day, and also sitting on our laps and sleeping on our feet and doing all kinds of cute stuff.
2. The girlfriend got a job at a start-up in the city. She was a temp for a long time and got hired on full-time in mid January. She does not like the job, but the pay is good and she (and I) got health insurance, including vision and dental. So you don't need to worry that we're going to be on the streets any time soon.
3. I got the job with the SAT prep company. It has not been a particularly successful thing for me, as I have only taught one weekend class and had one student to tutor. Not much money. I have had interviews for two different jobs, neither of which I got. I have another job interview on Friday, so keep your fingers crossed. I got the interview in one of those my girlfriend's friend's sister works for the company sort of scenarios. Okay, not "sort of" scenarios. That is the situation. Hopefully they'll hire me. I really want a job and money. And to leave the house on a more regular basis.
4. We have a lot more furniture now. Most of it was free, but there was the excitement of my first trip to IKEA to purchase a few things. Still, I would say that roughly 85% of the things we have in our house we got either from outside the dumpster in our apartment building or on freecycle, which is this mailing list where people offer things they're trying to get rid of and you can have them if you come and get them.
5. Actually, those are the highlights. We haven't made any friends or done anything particularly exciting, but we have had a few visitors and we are planning a trip to Boulder in two weeks to see some friends. Also, I'm hoping to defend my dissertation in April, so keep your fingers crossed on that...
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