It must be love
Sky-high rents? Ten percent sales tax? Gridlock traffic, 4:30 p.m. sunsets, slim job prospects and rain ad nauseum? I wish I knew how to quit you, Seattle.
But the cliches are true: relationships aren’t easy and involve compromise. If the pros outweigh the cons, you dwell on the former to deal with the small frustrations that come with the latter.
My friend Emily Gillespie, a reporter at the Corvallis Gazette-Times, told me recently that I may as well be dating Seattle. I seem willing to trap myself in this city with a lease, a choir membership and roommates even if it slows down my professional life–something people in committed relationships often do to support their significant others. As I watch my friends and former classmates become full-time, exempt employees with benefits at small newspapers in Alabama, Arizona and Montana, I’m content to remain a perpetual intern at a major metropolitan daily who works nights and holidays and takes a second job outside her career field of choice.
Why? Because Seattle and I are to celebrate our six-month anniversary next week, and I think it’s love.
I’ll go up to my apartment building’s rooftop garden–which, might I mention, has gorgeous views of the Puget Sound and the Space Needle–and shout it, if you’d like. But I’d rather revel in the feeling quietly as I bake cookies here in my kitchen with O’Carolan’s greatest hits playing in the background–and revel in the fact that, for the first time ever, I’m content with working and being somewhere other than Santa Cruz over the holidays.
Comments
Stephanie Kimball
December 7, 2010 at 11:35 pm
In the long run happiness and contentment is more important than money, although money is good also. Figure the number of years there are to work and being happy is most important. A few years at a bad job and unhappy work environment make a twenty or thirty year career seem a long time.
Patience is very important. Love, Aunt Steph
Jess
December 28, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Now if only you could feel that way about something other than a city =p I miss you a ton, let me know next time you come into the area. And like your Aunt said, its better to be happy then making a ton of money and being miserable. <3
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