New Year, New Job

My new job starts in two weeks. I'm excited about the new opportunities this job will bring, but I'm also a little sad about leaving my old one. As I'm preparing to hand off the role, I realize just how much I have accomplished over two years.

I was hired into my current role just as the position was being established. This gave me the flexibility to make the role my own. I took the basic job description given to me in the first few days and slowly put my own spin on it. As appropriate, I took great delight in adding some online marketing and branding in with my web editing responsibilities and over time have established us a productive online presence.

I've earned the trust of my bosses which allowed me the freedom to prove my ideas to them and I appreciate the fact that I had this opportunity. As I move from this role into a new role in a new company, I can't help but be a little sad in giving up "my baby."

I only hope that all the work I put into building my current position into what it has become will not be for nothing. As my boss contemplates replacing me, I hope they will and I hope that some of the work I've done will stay as a foundation for the next person to come in and build upon.

And most of all, I hope that I will be lucky enough in my new position to be given the same opportunity.

“Never turn down a job because you think it's too small; you don't know where it can lead” - Julia Morgan

Standing on the edge eyes closed and about to jump. The smallest leap I've ever made. It should be the easiest, but maybe that's why it's the scariest.


Take risks: if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise. ~Author Unknown

On Winter

I step out into the parking lot as dusk begins to fall. There is a stillness to the air that you only feel on bitterly cold and empty nights. The silence of winter. The crisp, cold quiet that has a presence and, at the same time, doesn't.

The parking lot is half empty but the snow has continued to fall covering up the tracks of anyone who's been before. I feel like I'm the last person who exists in the world as I walk over to my car hearing only the crunch my footsteps make in the snow.

The wind picks up and I quicken my pace. Stars begin to pierce the clear sky and I know that without a cloud cover it's going to be a cold night. I reach my car and start the engine to let it warm up as I grab the snow brush and clean off the windshield.

I dread getting back into the car and having to grab the steering wheel so cold it can still be felt through gloves. I take a moment and glance up.

The sky is now dark and the snowflakes have gotten even larger. I watch the fluffy flakes swirling around under the streetlight. Still alone I feel as if I am trapped inside one of those souvenir snow globes.

I finally get back inside the car and sit and watch the flakes fall back on the windshield while bracing myself for the concentration my drive home will take. I can see the snowflakes in delicate detail - just like the ones we used to draw in elementary school - and for a moment, I'm grateful for the beauty of winter.

For the first time in my life I'm homesick. Weird, because I've often been away from home and have never been bothered by it before.

I went off to summer camp when I was younger all the time and even lived in a foreign country for 6 months and never felt homesick during any of these experiences. Sure, I missed people but I guess those were situations where there was some type of term limit on the time I would be away from home.

Maybe the reason I'm feeling this so acutely at present, is that I'm starting to realize the permanence of my life here - and not just meaning in New York City, but the fact that I may never even live in the same time zone as home again and I never get to visit as much as I wish.

Lately random excerpts from my past flash back on a daily basis and as I realize they come from all the places I've called home in the past, I'm wondering if these feelings of "homesickness" aren't so much about the place itself, but maybe more about things I'm lacking here.


"Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time. You don't really long for another country. You long for something in yourself that you don't have, or haven't been able to find.” -Anonymous

Stay Tuned

It's been awhile since I've been here and for awhile I wasn't sure I was going to be back, but once again the pull of the pen recaptures me. My thoughts are never better expressed than through the written word and even though right now there are still more thoughts than there may be words, making even some of them tangible is a step in the right direction.