This way a chill wind blows...

...no, wait. That's just my mom. She's coming for a visit.

It's also the coldest butt end of March that no one should have to endure. Go awAY, Winter! God!

I haven't recorded in these annals the agonizing process of deciding in favor of New York, and y'all should be real, REAL glad about that. But I will say that today I woke up from a night of tossing and turning, determined to call Nice Government Job and say, "At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot, I made a mistake. Can I have that job after all?"

I didn't, in the end. But it was hard to write back to my supervisor -- who needled me gently tonight about not having told him my decision yet -- that I wasn't going to take the job that he really wanted me to take, that he had served as a recommendation for, and for the funding of which written a recommendation for a fellowship application. As I told him, the reasons I could articulate for taking the DC job resonate so much better with virtually everyone I spoke with -- better hours, better mission, more responsibility, more interesting subject area, rarity of opportunity, and so on. The reasons I could articulate for the New York job were so much more personal and less logical -- social support network, the desire to try something new in a new place, the lack of desire for responsibility in a legal job -- but probably have a better chance of greater happiness for me, despite the brutal hours and pace of the city and the position. Strangely enough, taking the firm job turned out to be the tough choice, because I couldn't defend it as well.

I don't know if I made the right choice. I regret not choosing the Nice Govt Job, just as I would have regretted not taking the Big Corporate Job, had I gone the other way. But my biggest regret is having set up this decision
between two options, neither of which I truly look forward to. It was a sobering realization to have on one's birthday. I wish I could say that I resolve never to be in that position again. If this were a movie, I'd wish it to be that moment where the heroine looks up from a crushing defeat, her face slowly shifting from an ashen, shaken visage, blurring into a wiser, grimmer, steelier face of 10 years later, the face of a person that doesn't take shit from anyone, especially not herself. I don't know how to become that person. Do you? [Sigh.]