Tuesday, January 13, 2009

New City...New Challenges

Well, here I sit in my new home, Spokane, WA. I moved here a little over a week ago, but it seems like longer. I graduated from college back in mid-December and had a few weeks to enjoy the holidays and spend time with my family in Wisconsin and Iowa before packing my life into my tiny car and driving halfway across the country, landing here in Spokane.
My fiance is going to graduate school here, at Eastern Washington Univ. for creative writing, fiction. So we're a couple of writers...I guess I'd better get used to living on a shoestring! I moved out here with no friends, no family and no job, and it was really scary at first. I've never lived outside of Wisconsin, and although I've traveled all over the U.S. it's always been on a trip with family or a group of friends. I wasn't sure how I would cope. I wondered also if my height would be a big deal all over again, with new people and new attention.
Scotty, my fiance, has quite a few friends from the masters program he's in, and I've met quite a few of them. Sure, there were passing comments about my height, but nothing rude or at all offensive. Scotty read one of his short stories for a group at a coffee house a few days ago, and there's a guy who does all the introductions. This guy called Scotty the night before to see if he could do an intro making fun of me being taller than him (he was going to Photoshop Scotty's head on Yao Ming's body) and he talked to me to ask if it was okay. I didn't really care, but I gave him a hard time about it because I wanted to see how he would react. So at the reading he didn't do the height thing at all; he said I'd intimidated him on the phone and he felt wierd.
This shows me two things: One, people here seem to be much more courteous than Midwesterners about physical differences (so far) and Two, I can still use my height to intimidate large men. Score!
On a more serious note, I'm struggling finding a job. I've been applying all over the place, and haven't heard a thing back from anyone. At first I was really questioning my skills and my marketability. I should have been a nurse, I thought, or a finance major or something that would get me a reliable job! But I know I wouldn't be happy doing that stuff. I could never stick needles in people and I suck at math. It seems there's always something that threatens my confidence. But when I look at it, I know I have skills. I'm tall, I have blue eyes, and just as much as I know those things about myself I also know that I'm a writer, and here I am, in a new city without a network and only my resume and portfolio to convince people I'm right for the job. But at least I have my skills. And I'm going to try to post on here once a day to keep those skills fresh. Coming up will be my reflections on the city, my neighborhood, and differences between WA and WI (It's more than just a letter!).
Anyway, this post is getting long, but there's a lot that's changed recently. Hopefully some of you, besides my mom, Scotty and Gram (Hi guys!) will be reading. Does anyone have insight to add about social difference between the Midwest and the coasts? Get posting!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Becky
You are definitely going to find a fabulous job. Its true.. its always tough coming out of college and finding that first great job, but this is obviously an even much more difficult time. Hang in there.. its just around the corner. You will love the Northwest.. what a fabulous part of the country!

Sunil said...

There should be some challenges because we have to adopt to new environment. But we have to confident that we can do this.

Sunil

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