Why Michigan? Why not?

Go Blue...

During my senior year of college I had regular meetings with my unofficial life coach. My future, which had once seemed so clear and straight-forward, was now completely open-ended, and I just needed someone to talk things through with.

“What do you want to do?” he would ask me.

“Well, I think I want to edit books… in the long run…”

“Well, what is your number one concern?”

“I don’t want to move back to Eureka.”

This was my biggest fear. That I would get stuck. Don’t get me wrong; I love my hometown. I just think it would be a dead end for me. Not saying it’s that way for everyone; I have plenty of friends with great jobs and great lives in Eureka… I just don’t think I could really thrive there.

And so I applied to dozens of publishing jobs during my last semester of college. They were all over the place – New York, Boston, Chicago, Oregon, Florida, and I think I even applied to a couple in England and Australia.

My good friend Julianne and I had a dream of moving to New York together (okay, we still do). It was a simple plan, really:

1. Get jobs in New York.

2. Find an apartment.

3. Go out every weekend and mingle with wealthy businessmen.

I even looked at apartments in New York. “Let’s live near Central Park!” she suggested. It was a plan.

It was about March when, after not being contacted by a single company I had applied to (aside from the occasional “we have received your application” email), that I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was technically qualified for all the jobs I applied to, but honestly, I didn’t have a chance with Simon & Schuster, Random House, McGraw Hill, Hearst Magazines… I was reaching for the stars, which is a good thing, but I had no real backup plan.

So May came, and it was time for graduation. When people asked me what I was doing with my life, I had to tell them the truth, which I had finally come to accept: “I’m moving back to Eureka for probably just a year. Going to work, save some money, then get a job, move somewhere…”

I put it off for as long as I could. After graduation I stayed in San Diego for another week. Then I stayed with Julianne in San Jose for a week and a half. Then after going to Eureka for a few days I went back to the Bay Area. I just didn’t want to admit to myself that I lived there now. I applied to a few jobs in Eureka, but I was spending so much time elsewhere that I didn’t invest much time into the job search.

A little over a month after my college graduation I was sitting at home with my friend Hannah, who was going to the University of Michigan for grad school in the fall. Half-jokingly, one of us said something about me looking for jobs in Ann Arbor. My laptop was right there, so I went onto a couple job boards and applied to a couple of editorial jobs.

The next day I left for Africa, and it was while on that mission trip that I really decided that I needed to move away from Eureka. I love new people and new places, and that is precisely what I cannot find in my hometown. So, on the drive back from the San Francisco airport, I told my parents: “I think I’m going to move to Michigan.”

A week later I had a room in a house. I signed the lease and began searching for jobs. Before I arrived in Michigan, I had three job interviews lined up. The first one, at a café a few blocks away from my house, was less than 12 hours after I arrived in Ann Arbor.

So now I have a new home. I’m in a house with new roommates, in a city with new faces, and I work at a café with people who have become my new friends. It’s an adventure. It may not be my typical adventure, but it’s still new and exciting… and I really think that life isn’t about your circumstances—whether you live in San Diego or Ann Arbor, whether you’re an editorial assistant for Random House or a barista at Glass House Café, you get out of life whatever you put into it.