New York, New York

Sorry I've been out of touch for a little while, but I spent all last week in New York City, and I didn't really have the time or the energy or the desire to blog. God, moving to such a scary city, and for the first time being in complete control of my own life, and having to take responsibility for my own choices, is so overwhelming. I don't know where to start explaining the ups and downs of my emotional state over the past seven or eight days. First of all, I was really excited to hang out with Bri, so that was a good thing. And I really do like New York for a lot of reasons, not least is that subway, which I found much easier to navigate than I did last November. I saw a lot of things I hadn't seen before (Central Park, for instance) and went to places I'd never been before (the Village, Queens, Jersey). Sadly, a lot of the plans Cambria and I made before I came (see her cousin's play, see Legally Blonde: The Musical, go back to Vol de Nuit and steal a Delirium Tremens glass) did not materialize, but there is plenty of time for that when I move there. WHEN I move there. It's going to happen. I've decided. It might take me a month or so, but I promise, Kim--by Thanksgiving, I will be there! I'll be living with a total stranger and temping, most likely, but I will be there!

I accomplished a few things while I was out there. Firstly, I had lunch with Julie from Random House, who promised to give my resume and cover letter to the woman who is hiring an assistant at Three Rivers Press, which is an imprint of the division (Crown) where Julie works (I think for the Publisher). She gave me a lot of great insight into the job, the company, and the industry in general, and she was really funny and kind to me. I really hope I get to interview for the job, and I plan on staying in touch with her, because she seems like a great person to hang out with and learn from. So maybe I'll get an interview for that job--they haven't called yet, but I'm sure that has little to do with anything. My experience working for a publishing house is that when an assistant leaves, they really do need to fill the position right away, but instead of doing so immediately they instead pile tons and tons of work upon the remaining assistants and take their sweet time hiring. There are many reasons for this, probably one of which is that hiring people is time consuming and annoying, especially with the turnover rate in these positions, which practically guarantees that even the lowest-rung editor is hiring a new assistant at least once every year and a half, if not more often. That's how it was at Thomson, that's how it probably is everywhere else. So I'm not freaking out yet--if I have any chance at all of getting an interview for a position, it's this one. If I don't get a call from them, I just don't know what I'm going to do.

I also meet with Jessica, who works for Penguin. She didn't have a lot of helpful leads, but she did weigh in on Mary-Kate Olsen's appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brian and Britney's disastrous VMA performance (which, way to stop being either relevant or respectable, MTV). She also told me a lot of stories about her time in the industry that are interesting to almost nobody but me, and she told me about a lot of the books she's been working on and acquiring, all of which sound really great. There's this whole book about body image written by a former Miss USA/America (?) pageant winner that has pictures of real women's bodies in an attempt to show young girls that they don't have to look like porn stars or supermodels to be beautiful. It sounds trite, but the way that Jessica described it to me made me thing it's going to be really awesome--maybe a bit controversial, but awesome. She said she'd keep an eye out for positions I can apply to. It's getting to be that, while I'd still like to work in fiction, I think I'd be perfectly fine with working with nonfiction, and even more than that I think I'd probably enjoy it better in the long run because I only read selected nonfiction, so I wouldn't feel as though my entire life was consumed by the same thing--and I wouldn't run the risk of losing my taste for fiction just because I sit around editing it for a living. So, in other words, this RH position is perfect for me. I hope they take my experience and enthusiasm into account, because I would die to work there.

Um, what else? Oh, I kind of, after much tooling around the metro area looking at apartments, decided that I'm going to have to live with a roommate (makes it less likely I'd have to take any responsibility for fulfilling a lease--I can just pay my rent and utilities and have that be that), and I only want to live in Astoria (Queens) or Manhattan. Also, I only want to live with women in their twenties, and hopefully only one of them. So that should give me someplace to start when I go back at the end of the month. I overheard this girl talking on her cell phone over by the Bloomingdale's where Bri works, telling her friend that she applied to about forty places (looking for roommates, I'm assuming), heard back from about four of them, and only about two were acceptable to her. So it looks like if I want to find the right living situation, I'm going to have to really widen my net (within my set parameters) and hope I get lucky. It'll probably take time, but while I'm there looking for a place I can also be applying to/visiting temp agencies, and hopefully something will come of that as well. I'm actually pretty upbeat about it right now--I wasn't a few days ago, when I cried practically every time I got on the subway. But on Tuesday I didn't want to go home, which was a good sign that I'm ready to stay, and now that I have a plan I can get things underway as soon as I go back. Poor Bri and Jessica (her roommate, not the girl who works at Penguin)--they're going to have to put up with me for at least another week sometime in the future.