twenty-something

Here's a dumb little MySpace forward thingee that I actually found interesting, especially as I prepare to turn 27 later this week...

Every morning, as I approach my new native T stop, Oak Grove, I am filled with a sense of dread. When I enter, I will be faced with two options -- Metro or BostonNOW, two of Beantown's free commuter paper offerings -- and a very high-stakes choice.

There are other options, of course -- the Phoenix, Improper Bostonian -- but these are the free dailies, and these are the papers that hire people, real live people, to push the latest issue in your face. And therein lies the choice.

I simply do not know how to meet people in real life.

Michiganian Transplant at Malden Stop & Shop? - m4m - 27

Ah, symmetry.

Hard to believe that, one year ago, I was counting down the days before I left Vermont to move in with my best friend in Manhattan. One year ago, I was four days away from that big move. One year later, I'm four days away from another big move -- this one to a newly-renovated-but-very-familiar apartment five minutes north of downtown Boston with my other best friend. Yes, after three months living on E. 14th Street, a block from Union Square, I'm fully settled in Red Sox Nation and ready -- not just ready, wicked psyched -- for my next move to, technically, the 'burbs.

Is this where I would have foreseen myself when I left the Green Mountains for the Big City last year? Not a chance. My life's not particularly glamorous and it's far from perfect, but I'm a heck of a lot happier than I've been in a long time. And that, ultimately, is why I left Vermont -- which, for the record, I miss desperately, but I was desperately unhappy there. Those three months in New York and the last nine months here in Boston have been exactly what I needed, full of those things that my old life was so devoid of -- experience, excitement, mistakes, old friends and new blood -- and missing the things that took so much energy -- drama, stress, Duncan. And after a year of moving around, of new people and places, of practically non-stop dating, a year of good-byes and hellos and more good-byes, I am ready to settle down. To stop and smell the summer. To stop jumping and finally let myself fall.

Am I satisfied yet? Hell no. But I'm living a happier, healthier life here, one virtually free of oppressive blood drives, Chicken Charlie's, and a certain bad ex-boyfriend, and that's worth celebrating.