I am twenty-five today. It's a nice symbolic time to be going through several transitions.

I have a new job. I have been there for two weeks and I love it. The people are really awesome. I am excelling at the work, and people are already thrilled with how productive I've been. It is a permanent position, so I can stay as long as I like (this was not the case with my last job.) I am making more money. It's in the same department I was in before, just a different division, so I am still working under the same department head, who is really enthusiastic about helping me with my career. Individuals who turned me into an anxious rabbitlike creature are no longer an integral part of my life. At the same time, my favorite former co-workers are still near enough that we can go get a slice of pizza together over lunch break.

The new job has enabled my next transition, which is: if everything goes the way it looks like it's going to go, I will be moving at the end of the summer. Into my own apartment. Meaning, without roommates. It is a lucky windfall of a place, better than what I should be able to afford, bequeathed to me by a friend who is leaving town at the end of the summer. I find myself dreamily imagining things like: storing spare toiletries in a closet instead of a box. Always having enough space for my food in the fridge. Having guests over without worrying about other people commandeering the kitchen or the television. Things that most people probably take for granted, and which I will probably take for granted before long, too. I am already sort of nesting in my head.

There will be downsides: No laundry in the building. I will probably forgo cable and maybe even internet (the horror!) I will keep the place on the chilly side during the winter so as to keep the heat vaguely affordable. The subway and groceries will be farther away than they are now. But it will be worth it. I am going to try not to whine too much about it, because this is my choice. I take responsibility. This is my life and it's gonna be good. Don't you know?

***

Life these days has involved a lot of this taking-responsibility business. For years I've gotten more and more fed up with people who lament their situations when there were simple steps they could have taken to avoid them. Mind you, we all need to vent sometimes about whatever frustrations there are in our lives, regardless of whether we anticipated them or would have avoided them, given the opportunity. But the woe-is-me attitude about solvable or avoidable problems is something I try not to indulge in most of the time.

For instance: poetry workshop runs incredibly late on Monday nights. If I go, I will be exhausted the next day. But I'd rather go and be exhausted than not go and be well-rested. Then, if I have coffee the next day I'll be twitchy. If I don't I'll start to fall asleep at my desk at work. I'll take the coffee. If I run around the whole of Boston and the North Shore on public transportation to see my friends, I'll have hardly any quiet time at home. But I'd rather keep in touch with people. My choices these days exhaust me, but keep me going, too. My life has become the definition of burning the candle at both ends.

The advantage of being a pessimist: the things about my life and my choices that surprise me are usually the startlingly wonderful things. Somehow I never see those coming.

***

Yesterday, as a birthday outing, my entire family and several friends went to the Braintree 4th of July celebration, which, mysteriously, does not occur on the 4th of July. Their live entertainment was provided by my favorite folk band, the Woods Tea Company, so as per tradition we baked them pies and sang and danced and looked silly in public. Or at least, some of us did that, and others watched the rest of us look silly in public.



Conveniently, there seems to be a consensus that it is perfectly reasonable to dance around all silly-like if you're being forced to by a two-year-old.



It is always kind of wonderful and astonishing to get a bunch of people together from different parts of my life, and as usual I felt very happy, and very loved.

I don't have a lot to say these days, but I have to tell you: sometimes I feel kind of unstoppable.

More details later, maybe.

Everything in my life seems to be up in the air at the moment. It's a bit like standing at the edge of a cliff, ready to jump, without knowing whether you can fly. Right now a constant low-level anxiety permeates my life, and I keep telling myself that soon, if everything falls into place, I could be happy. But of course, everything might not fall into place, and I may or may not be terribly happy with the result.

It has crossed my mind that maybe this is when the happiness happens: right now, when I don't know how anything will turn out, but I can peer into this almost-world and hope and believe. The year since I got out of school has really been a transitional time, and I have been trying to figure out what I want, and what it means to have a good life. Sometimes the dream-future in my head surprises even me.

Hey, did I mention that I climbed Mount Monadnock last weekend?



Well, I totally did. And it was awesome. More photos on Flickr.

It's been well-documented that I hate it when strangers talk to me in the city, with a few exceptions. But today while I was waiting for the subway, occupying myself with my usual regimen of agonizing about my life, a somewhat tipsy woman came over and saved me from myself. She asked me where to get a train to Park Street, and then began chattily telling me about how she hates the Orange Line because of the time she was robbed at gunpoint at one station. I sympathized, and that was all the encouragement she needed to keep going. She told me where she lived and where she worked, and where she was moving and how that would make her commute better. She told me about her job and her roommates and how her boyfriend is too cheap to buy a bus pass and walks to work instead. I smiled and nodded and even talked a bit about my job, when she asked. And when she thanked me for the directions and got on her train, I marvelled at how simply her life had been opened to me, like a storybook, and closed again with a quiet thud as she walked away. Unlike my own dog-eared book that I flip through constantly, searching for clues to pages yet unwritten.