That's All Folks

I live at home in the bedroom I have had since I was 12 years old and I work for my Mother. I head 80% of the Communication and Social Media projects around the office. My contract ends in July and then I have to figure out what I really want to do with my life. So I have a little less than a year left in the place I grew up before really taking off - and not just for 6 months and then coming back. This next move is a permanent one in the sense that now, permanently, my home will just be a vacation spot, rather than a solid destination.

I need this year though. It's amazing how much money you can spend in Europe. I am pretty crazy when it comes to saving money. I have a pretty high threshold I like my savings account to be at and I hate the feeling of wanting something I can't afford - so I typically work 2 jobs to be able to afford anything I need and want. Well I guess since being in Europe, it's gotten harder to get a job...who would have thought. So I need a year to build my savings account back to that threshold and to polish my resume just a bit more to be able to get a better than entry-level job once I move to the city.

I am looking at Boston or DC as viable cities to move to and I really want to write once I get there. I loved keeping this blog and if I could translate that feeling over into a career than I would be the luckiest girl in the world. So if anyone knows jobs where you can make 6 figures a year while being a write, please, please let me know! Also if anyone has any connections in Boston or DC that they think I would be a good fit with, please let me know. I am starting this new thing where I am going to interview successful people in and around my hometown just to get a sense of the skills set I am going to need in order to reach the same success. So even just an interview would be great!

I am pretty lucky that I worked really hard on my resume while I was in college, so I have some great real life experience with big name companies that will help me get ahead. But I am excited about the persona I can bring into any interview room now that I am home from Europe.

I feel really good about myself. When I returned home from Europe, I was a bridesmaid in a wedding and the groomsmen who walked me down the aisle said that he defines success as how interesting or uninteresting you are. That's a perfect definition. It takes away all of the material things that define success and leaves it up to a really abstract interpretation.

So right now that's what I am aiming for. I want to become as interesting as possible. Which means I'm always going to have to keep exploring, traveling, working hard, learning etc. What I am applying to my life are the lessons I learned during my 6 months in Europe and I think that those lessons are going to get me, one step of the way, to becoming wildly successful.

1) When I read a newspaper the world itself is put in such a different context for me. Everything is smaller and I understand how things are interrelated, more than ever.

2) I have started taking French lessons and when I choose to learn something on my own time, I find, I am 10 times more interested in it than when I was an actual student in a classroom.

3) There is a comfort with yourself that begins to grow every year your birthday passes. The understanding I have that sometimes we just aren't compatible with other people feels great. Just b/c others want you to change or perhaps you don't see eye to eye with someone doesn't mean you're necessarily wrong. It really is ok to agree to disagree and just be done with it.

4) If I can navigate a subway system in multiple different countries and languages, I can move ANYWHERE in America. The fear of leaving home doesn't exist anymore, b/c I have already done it.

5) I feel less and less that I have something prove to people. One of the biggest things I have been afraid of is that it would be difficult to leave my hometown that has the tendency to make it difficult for people to actually move away from it. Now I know that I can live independently and go out on my my own. So yes, I do want to move away from Fryeburg, but I don't want to move across the country just to prove something. And that feels really good.

6) I am more comfortable with being honest about my opinions and feelings. I don't feel like I need to hide from how I really feel when having an open forum with a friend and I am not so afraid of what I want to say. If it's real and honest, then that's all I can and others around me can ask for.

I am sure I am forgetting about a billion things I learned while traveling around, but that's ok. Those top 6 are pretty good ones and for the rest, I will just make sure I write them down in a journal or a random post-it note lying around in my office.

For now, this blog is done. It will be a relic of the past 8 months of my life that were just amazing. I saw and did a lot of things that not many people are lucky enough to do. I am very blessed with my life experiences at just the young age of 23. It makes me excited about what the rest of my life will hold. If I could fit this much excitement into almost a year, what can I fit into the next 5 or 10?

Definitely not kids, but what about entertaining the idea of a relationship? I still think I am too young, but I am definitely not too young to think about the type of qualities I am willing to commit to. A job - that is definite. My Dad says that if I can't find the perfect job that fulfills my passion then don't take it, keep traveling. Life is too short to be doing something you hate during a time when I should be pushing the limits of all angles in my life. After all there is a direct correlation between how happy you are in a job to how successful you are in it. (And there is so much more in Europe to see. The Scandinavian Countries, Croatia, Scotland, England, Poland, more of France to practice my ever growing French. Plus I want to back pack in Costa Rica and ski and drink wine in Chile...)

So I have a lot to look forward to and lot to work towards. But for now, until the next adventure, that's all folks!

OH! And for anyone who is wondering. I bought myself an awesome 2007 Limited Subaru Outback upon my return to make up for my totaled Jeep!