Still in Chicago, still something of a hermit

I've decided that it's finally time to cut the cord to Livejournal. But, of course, one still needs a blog. I'm beginning to believe that without this and Facebook one doesn't even have a toehold in reality.

I'm nine months into being a college graduate, though it's tempting not to count the summer and to continue with the sense that a year really begins somewhere in early September. Either way, I'm still on the quest to find that "life experience" people like me supposedly come across when they put a year or two between themselves and grad school.

Over the past few months, in the name of supporting myself, I've ended up as a temp worker specializing in health care organizations. In fact, I'm writing this during an afternoon lull at the American Osteopathic Association, between putting together material for a conference (with a super-cool hole-puncher/binding machine) and organizing a filing system. For the most part, the work isn't enormously interesting, but this association, and a few others, have liked me a lot, asked for my resume, and tantalizingly hinted at some real jobs that could open up in their publishing departments. It's not Yale, but editing health care textbooks could be interesting. So I'm ending up with some damn fine secretarial skills, getting my foot in the door for some positions that could be genuinely interesting, and earning enough for rent, shopping trips to the Loop, and maybe even a kitty.

And I'm pleased enough with the state of things to put off grad school for another year, so I can stick around in Chicago. This does spoil the symmetry of J. and I alternating our MA programs before the five to seven ominous years of potentially far-flung doctorates arrive on the scene. But that's tempered by a recent epiphany of mine: I'm young. Very young. So much so that I don't think I'll be past my prime as a teacher or a scholar if I decide to become a grad student at the venerable age of 24 or 25.


I love it here, Chicago is gritty and lively, and if J. had a job we could have a nicer apartment in a more interesting part of town. That's not to say that I'm not growing fond of Hyde Park. 57th Street seems to be only used bookstores, and we're nicely lake-adjacent. And there is a certain kind of guilt accompanying the wish to move away from the poor, black neighborhood in the South side to a hipper, safer North area (Chicago's a really segregated city). I think it might be harder for me than for J. , since he has a community at U Chicago. Nearly all of the friends I've made here I've met through him, and I'm looking forward to moving someplace where I can meet people on my own. U Chicago's really not a "fun" sort of place, and I feel somewhat like at outsider as the mere girlfriend of a student.

But it's not all U of C's fault that I'm feeling a tad isolated. Since we moved out here I've had this mindset that I can't really enjoy anything until I've found a well paid job for a suitable sort of organization that's worthy of my many talents. It's a modern Austenian concept, just replace marriage with employment. So I haven't found a yoga studio I like, or taken Spanish lessons, or joined up with some Obama campaigners (though in this particular city that seems a little moot). And while all these things would be easier in a neighborhood with farmers markets, and streets I don't mind walking late at night, they're hardly impossible here.

I guess I'm still working out how to socialize minus Kline and the Black Swan.