Madness? You Decide. (Part II)

If you’ve read the last post, you’ve probably caught that I’m about to chuck my salaried (granted a meager one), full-time job in order to attempt to make a life as a beach bum in Wilmington. Not that the whole goal is to laze around Wrightsville all day and be tan and worthless… but is it too much to ask to want to take up residence somewhere warm, quaint and close to the ocean without having to sell my soul to afford that lifestyle?

I’m already hearing that jobs, which are scarce anywhere these days, are practically nonexistent in Wilmington, and for all intents and purposes I should be terrified to be job-searching in this economy. But this is the girl who, since graduating high school, has held enough jobs to collect an impressive collection of hairnets and nametags.

Amanda’s job history key words: Panera Bread, fastfood, UC Library, Gameworks Veejay, coverband singer, barrista, Bed Bath & Beyond, chicken wings, bartender, hotel sportsbar, barrista (again), Austin Music Magazine, fine dining (times two), arts and entertainment writer, photography studio manager, outdoor market worker, interactive agency office manager. Just to give you an idea. (For some reason I feel I should have ended this paragraph by exploding into the chrous of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”…)

So I have experience in a few areas (understatement of the year), and I’m obviously not beneath much of anything. Maybe this creates a false sense of security, but there has to be some kind of work for me in Wilmington. (Check back in two months, and you may find me in tears, regretting the day I made this statement).

I’m kicking myself to the unemployment curb, and I am not scared.

On the Road Again

Having had a military upbringing, I was no stranger to relocating. In fact, the pack-up-and-start-anew became something not to loathe and dread, but to look forward to with an excited anticipation to rival Christmas morning. It became a way to bid a fond farewell to the problems I was experiencing in one locale and say hello to a chance to do it bigger and better in the next town or neighborhood.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me that years later,  when the necessary moving about of college concluded on graduation day, I became restless quickly, and despite the fact that no outside force was requiring it, I decided to move again. I was off to wild and weird Austin, Texas. Why Austin? Hmmm. Because someone told me it was a cool town that liked music, I think. I’d never visited and didn’t know anyone there, but it was exotic and unknown, and I desired both.

Two years later, antsy again, and having created a nice, new boatload of problems in the south, I wiped the slate clean again and moved back to Ohio. Is this a horrible way to try to improve one’s life? Yes. Its this enabling myself to ignore problems instead of facing and solving them. Hell yes. Am I about to do it again? You bet I am.

J was accepted to grad school in Wilmington, North Carolina, a coastal town that’s bumping in the summers and sleepy in the off-season. Neither of us can stand the frigid, five-month winters of the Midwest and we both long for a change, and this seems to be an appropriately timed answer.

The difference this time around? If I come back from North Carolina (in two years or otherwise), I’ll be damned if it’s because I have made mistakes I don’t want to face and am using the U-Haul as getaway car one again. I’ve picked up the bad habit of keeping my situation forever temporary, and I carry that around like a security blanket. My goal now? To make my next move purposeful, meaningful, positive. Or even (let’s get a little crazy here) nonexistent? I mean, a girl starts to feel like she’s effing Scott Bakula, always hoping the next leap will be the leap home.

But I also have an undying case of wanderlust which has become the enabler/drinking buddy of my cut&run behavior. So if I must keep globetrotting, from now on, may it be for reasons of the former and not the latter.

In the meantime, though, I’ve got a move to plan. After many a discussion, I think we’ll be using J’s family home near Charlotte as a stepping stone, staying there for a month while we figure out jobs and a living situation in Wilmington. But I’ve put my notice in at work (did I mention I’m quitting a full-time salaried job with benefits in this economy with no replacement in site? More on that later…), and the move-out date from my current house is May 31st.

6 weeks and counting. Let the anticipation ensue.

~a