040

I am out of money and have to move home. I have lived in NYC since May and never found a paying job. I never really supported myself in the sense that I lived off of my own money. I supported myself in other ways, and in a lot of ways I am the most independent I've ever been, but being an adult means you have to know when to fold.

Of course, this feels like failure. This feels like I came here, tried to accomplish something, and couldn't make it. But I have to think of it as a step forward, even though at first it's going to feel like a step backward.

At first it's going to feel like I've ended up back where I was right after I left school: living with my parents, with no freedom or independence, broke and jobless and lacking any focus. And for a while, it's going to suck. I'm not going to get to see my friends or do the things I want to do. I won't have a life. Not like I had here. But eventually I'm going to work towards something much better. I'm going to get a job and save my money. (Maybe I'll even learn how to drive.) I'm going to go to school and carve out a new life for myself and come back and rock this city.

Compared to where I was this summer, you could argue that I'm moving backward. Compared to where I was this time last year, I am in a much better place. And I'm going to keep moving in a good direction. I have survived a lot in these months, and I have learned how to take care of myself in ways I thought were impossible. Back then I never thought I'd be able to do this. I never thought I'd even be alive this long. That's probably part of the reason I've been fucking up these past few years: I never really planned for the future because I was so miserable that I didn't see myself having one. And then, after moving here, I thought I did have a future, just one that didn't involve school. I thought I could use my internship here as a stepping stone to a real career and skip the part where I go to college for four years. But now I know that no matter what I want to do (and I haven't got that part figured out just yet, but I have some ideas) I'm going to need an education to do it. And it's going to be a lot harder to do it this way than it would have been if I'd just done the four years straight out of high school. But since spring of 2006 I've had some amazing life experiences that I wouldn't change for the world. I have a doctorate from the school of hard knocks. Now it's time to get a degree from a different school.

So that's it. Money is forcing me to move back to Massachusetts, but I'm not trapped. I still have options and I'm going to be making choices that will improve my life. I'm really going to miss my life here. It's upsetting. I've been crying for days. But ultimately this is probably a good thing.