Small Steps

Winter had its finale last week when on Friday it blanketed the northeast with some more of the white stuff. But the season had been relatively mild and in its most earnest effort, all it could show for it was about 6 inches of snow and in some places it didn't even stick. In the city where the snow plows were eagerly awaiting for its arriving, there was not even a chance to accumulate on some of the major thoroughfares - including the front of my building so that my only reminder that it DID snow was the playground across which remained untouched until the weekend when kids rushed in to make snow angels.
This morning I woke up to bright Sunday sunshine and the melodious cheerful chirping of a familiar bird from back home - aha!!!, a maya!!! The sparrow shivered in the nippy morning temperature (44 degrees Fahrenheit) and fluffed its feathers. Yet despite, it hopped from one bar of my fire escape floor to another, armed with a wake-up tune and somehow, it felt like he had directed it towards me.

You know that cartoon image of the pages of the calendar just flipping by quickly? Seems that has been how the year had been to me and not without much event. I have traveled home, saw my beautiful daughter finish college, returned to New York with some restlessness and as a season draws its curtain for another, I find myself looking forward to 2007 as the year when there will be major changes.

Call it part of the impetus for spring cleaning but other than organize my closet and my cupboard, I feel like this is the year when I would do a major make-over of my life.

Out with the old and in with the new has found a new meaning in my life. AGAIN.

I really love my job but sometimes I wonder if I have reached a plateau in terms of enthusiasm and my capability to continue to learn when the things I have been doing is routinary day and day out. We would often joke about it at work that our familiarity with the many facets of our responsibilities, we have come to breathe, live and sleep our work and seriously, there are days when the load is so toxic that I would have nightmares about work not finished in time or materials that have deadlines not being sent out promptly for review.

And so out of curiousity I applied for a vacancy posted in the organization's job site a few weeks ago and got called in for an interview last Thursday. I came and did pretty good and I now I am wondering how I would turn down that job offer because I realize I am not ready to pack my boxes and move out of the crazy world of construction and engineering I am involved in. In a way it was reassuring to my ego that I have continued to be marketable but I have also reconciled with the fact that I was not yet ready to leave.

And then my next makeover endeavor is a change of address. I have been living in the same apartment for the past 5 years and much as I continue to enjoy coming home to something familiar, with my daughter joining me soon, a studio is no longer an ideal living arrangement. There are few bigger apartments in the city that are affordable, however. This is Manhattan where a 100 sf studio is cheap at $1,200 (AM New York story here). I pay almost the same greenbucks for my 400 sf unit so many people tell me I have a good deal and I should just stick with it. Two bedroom apartments that are affordable are definitely not to be found in the city. There are some that are fifteen minutes away, in a place they call East New York in New jersey because it is along the Hudson with grand views of the cityscapes of Manhattan. The commute is scaring me, however, just not ready to leave the convenience that the city provides at a high cost.

Spring inspires so much and is just screaming enthusiastically for a change. Still, I think my 'out with the old and in with the new' adventures will continue but for the meantime I think I am settling down with small steps - like a change of hairstyle. My hair which is at its longest has reached the middle fo my back and this coming weekend, I am chopping it back to shoulder length. That is not a bad start, no?