update

reading over the last post, i can't believe it's been seven months since i posted it. it is the first chapter of a book that has been cooking in my brain for years, but i have never completed -- or even written beyond those first few lines. the challenge is: where to go from there? that's a question that i have been struggling with, well, ever since i moved to new york.

i still don't know what is most important to me. i decided this year that i didn't want to be a reporter full-time any more. i have always and will always love to write, but working the way i was had sapped my will to write in my free time. i was spending so much time in front of the computer during the week (and on weekends) doing work, that when i wasn't working the last thing i wanted to do was sit at my computer and write more. that is the reason this blog has laid dormant for all this time.

relationship-wise, i have been single for the past year. i've met some guys that i have found interesting and fun, spent more time than i should have with my recent ex, and decided that online dating is not for me. writing a column on text messaging and dating has been really fun and enlightening, and i find inspiration for that from lots of unexpected places. finding a guy to love and support me has always been important to me, but i believe that things come to you when you least expect them, so i'm not looking.

the one thing i have not ever second guessed about my life is living in new york. yes, i have fantasies about picking up and living at the beach or the woods for a few months while i work on a book, buying a little dog and leasing a convertible and living someone else's life for a little bit. but those ideas are all temporary. i would always come back to the city.

so, as i tell the story of my journey here, what comes next? the many career moves and disappointments? the heartbreaks? the friendships that i've made and lost? we'll see.

prologue

I didn't come to New York wanting to be Carrie Bradshaw, although I know lots of girls do. Like Carrie, I wanted to be a writer, but I saw myself as more career-driven. I was interested in collecting bylines and beats, not labels or love. I was prepared for long workdays and late nights, working weekends to meet deadlines and sacrificing my personal life in the name of my career.

But when I landed my first job, which paid me $28,000 a year to answer phones for a top-tier editor at a business magazine, I realized my folly. At first, I hoped this time would be filled with freelancing and working on my blog, but within a few months I had fallen hopelessly in love with a reporter at the magazine, and my priorities changed just as quickly.

I eventually left magazine publishing to work for an Internet start up publication, a move I told myself was good for me and my career. At the time I thought that the magazine, and my first job, was not a waste because I had come out of it with a recognizable name on my resume and a future husband to boot. I lied to myself.