Year to date

It has now been almost exactly five months since Torsten and I loaded all of our stuff into our car and the moving van and embarked on a three-day drive to Denver. And you know how people say that things simultaneously feel like they happened yesterday and that they happened years ago? Well, this isn't like that. This just flat-out feels like it happens years ago. In the best possible way.

I don't miss DC. I miss living in the same city as my sister and I miss my friends there and I miss being within driving distance of my parents--but I don't miss living in DC. I don't miss our apartment, and I don't miss not having a car and relying on the bus and Metro to get everywhere, and I don't miss working in an office, and I don't miss being the incredibly hot, sticky summer and the cold, gray winter, and I don't miss the very businesslike attitude so many people had and the way nobody talked to strangers and nobody had pets. I just don't miss the city. I don't miss the feel of it.

The thing is that I loved DC while I was there, and before I was there, which is why I chose to move there. I am so glad I lived there, and not just because if I hadn't lived there I would never have met Torsten. It was a great place to move after college, and three years was the right amount of time to live there. And it was my choice to live in DC that got me involved in nonprofit work, which is how I learned that I could combine my love of editing with my desire to do something that felt meaningful to me.

I'm not trying to say that DC sucks, is my point. Because it doesn't, at all. It's a great city with lots to do (and a lot of it is free), and lots of culture and gorgeous architecture and interesting people and it's very multicultural and it has an excellent public transportation system and some really lovely parks. It has a vibe and a feeling and a culture all of its own, and that's fantastic.

But it wasn't the city for me, and so I don't miss it.

Also, five months in, I cannot possibly be more glad that I ended up keeping my job. I love working from home, absolutely love it, but it's more than that. And I love the excellent benefits I get (the perks of working for a nonprofit--they pay very little but they make up for it in benefits), but it's more than that, too.

I love my job itself. I love the work that I do and the people that I work with. I love that they value me as much as I value them. I love that I've been given the latitude to move in the direction I want with my work. I love that even from 1600 miles away, I feel very involved in my office and our work. I love that I'm good at what I do and that I have learned so much about public health in the past 3+ years that I've been working in the field.

I feel valuable. I feel like I'm contributing. I feel like the work I do is meaningful. I really ENJOY working. And I also enjoy that I work at a place that really values work-life balance, that does more than just pay lip service to it, that actively encourages it.

When I first got into public health after college, it was basically by accident. I was applying to every editing-related job I could find in DC, and the one I ended up with was in the nonprofit public health field, and it was a pretty good first job. And then a coworker from my first job left the company and a few months later gave me a call to tell me about a position that had opened up at her new company, and I ended up getting that job, and really liking it.

If I had taken the new job in Denver, things would be very different. I would be much more about online marketing and social media and not really at all about editing. I would be working in the private sector getting a higher salary but much worse benefits, and probably working much longer hours. The guy who offered me the job was great, and I'm sure I would have enjoyed working with him, but I don't think that ultimately I would have wanted to stay with that company, or in that field, forever.

Whereas with the job I have, I feel like it's really a CAREER. I could see staying with this job, moving up within the company but continuing to do the same type of work, indefinitely. And I think I'd be happy doing it. So I think it was the much better option for me. And I'm glad I figured that out in time to accept their offer. Even though I will always be grateful to the company whose job I turned down for opening up the opportunity for us to move to Denver, even though it turned out I didn't actually need that job to do it.

What about you guys? Are you happy with the city you live in and the job you work in? Or do you want to change one or the other, or both?