This sloth would be correct. Unfortunately, I've been sucked back into my pointless Facebook addiction, as well as finally drawn into the ridiculous Tumblr craze. I mean, they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words," or that the best ideas are often short, sweet, and to the point, but I feel like expressing myself in 144 characters or less is just making me dumb. Especially when those 144 characters are just lewd, out-of-context statements from my roommates that I hear through the paper-thin walls of our house late at night.

So, to boost my own self esteem, I'll type out of my butt for a good 3-5 paragraphs and hope to the powers that be that my pointless ramble indeed arrives at some sort of poignant revelation. Or at least includes a clever sexual innuendo. Actually, after the picture of the sloth, I think I should just quit while I'm ahead.

The semester is slowly progressing into the homestretch, and despite the now consistently beautiful weather and lack of heavy-duty conference work, my loopy, self-important, misery-be-damned mood is in remission. I think it's all because I got a job.

Don't get me wrong- in this market, I'm happy to have found anything, especially something I'm so incredibly passionate about (in this case,  doing press work, research reports, and community outreach writing workshops for the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts), considering I'm still numerous math and science credits away from obtaining my Bachelor's...
I've really found a niche here in New York City- more importantly, contacts, friends who might as well be family, and a significant other, as well as just an overall feeling of acceptance, productivity, and inclusion.
For the longest time, I just considered myself to be studying in the Big Apple, and living at 224 Shadow Road, Bellevue, Nebraska. However, as my relationships grew closer, and the things that tied me down to Omaha eventually started to disintegrate, I really feel like I'm more New Yorker than Nebraskan anymore. Everything is here now- my education (which is the predominate influence in my life right now), my best friends (sans the handful of ones who scattered all around the country after high school), my boyfriend, my house, and now my car. If only I could transplant a horse and a chihuahua into a little apartment in Midtown or Yonkers, I'd have it made.

About the time when I'd sent resumes everywhere, gotten rejected everywhere, and resigned myself to a whole four months of unemployment, I started to build the grand fantasy in my mind that I'd just stay in New York, continue to work with the admissions staff at Sarah Lawrence, and sashay about the city, observing, writing, and contemplating.

***(While this all sounds magnificent, it'd probably go something like this: work 9-5, five days a week reading and filing transfer applications, answering phones and emails, making copies, sending faxes, bitching about it all day long before going to my cramped apartment that I'd share with 3 or 4 other people, and spend the remainder of the day watching Netflix and eating Cheetos in my underpants)***

Just as I was planning to become an ex-Nebraska-patriot, I got a job that would be calling me back to the Big-O starting in June. Employment = yay. Paycheck = yay. Resume builder = no complaints. Sequestered in the middle of the country while my best friends and roommates emigrate back to either coast, leaving me practically all alone with nothing to do post-5pm other than ride my horse and walk Sid = a little lackluster.

This time last year, I was begging to come home- freshman year of college was scary. I didn't have a set group of friends. I was burned out from trying too hard in classes that were way too complicated for a concentration I wasn't sold on anymore. I would've given my left kidney to have a job or internship that put me back home. But now that college is fun, I know New York City and people in it, and I'm not working myself to the point of exhaustion and brain malfunction, landing my dream job almost feels ironic. Kind of like a "Screw you, universe," scenario.

I'm starting to accept the age old resignation that nothing can ever be simple. That one time when I baked a cake and sufficiently ate 3/4 of it on my own within the first 24 hours of icing it, it never occurred to me that "having your cake and eating it, too," is more or less metaphorical...where there's a will and a cake, the rules of the universe don't apply.