We all have options and we all make choices. I made a choice over a year ago when I was thinking about life after graduate school. I needed a job. Anything to do with dance. Anywhere on the mid-atlantic to north eastern seaboard. So I thought.
I went home. I talked to my former dance teachers; poked around a bit. It looked like I would be able to find a job; most likely teaching someone's baby how to dance... but in Baltimore. As a dancer, what else could I do? Somehow it felt simultaneously too easy and not right. Where could I take class? Would I be able to perform? Would I be able to choreograph? Yes, but would it be the way I really wanted?
So I decided to take a jump to where I desired to be anyway. Where I'd stayed until the last possible second in August 2007 before I moved to Iowa. Where I escaped to on EVERY break and holiday. (Literally, it got to the point where I'd fly home to Baltimore and the first question my dad would ask is "When are you going to New York?")
I applied for job after job, months in advance. My fellow grad students said "wow" at my ambition, but it seemed they didn't understand how much it wasn't a game. Going home was Plan Z.
May arrived. No job, but I moved forward. I lept. My dad told me I was stupid and wasting my money because I didn't sell my bed and everything else that didn't fir into a suitcase. Instead I had a yard/bake sale to benefit the "Moving to NYC" fund, packed all my ish in a moving truck, and drove with my friend, 8 of 16 hours to New York CIty on 1 week old drivers' license.
I arrived ...and moved in with Dancer D until I could stand on my own two feet. "Are you sure?" Yes.
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