On career changes and decisions

Once upon a time, I was a TV News Producer.

I loved being a TV News Producer, but there was one problem. I didn't love being a TV News Producer in Schenectady, NY. I loved living with Julie and Rich in a cheap flat my mom rented to us, and I loved the Thursday night Tekken tournament with our Village Drummer crew, and I loved arguing/flirting with Zach all day every day, and I loved the fact that we had a naked guy next door, but more for the funny ick factor than the full frontal nudity factor. Seriously, dude looked like Ned Flanders.

I also didn't love having a boyfriend who lived in Westchester. After shit got bananas at the TV station, I decided to find a job, any job, in the city. At the time, my main reason was to be closer to the boyfriend I'd been with off and on for three years, but really, he was just an excuse. I'd wanted to live here ever since Allison from Double Trouble started at FIT. Yes, at the age of 10, I informed my mother that I was going to be a fashion designer in New York City. Later, I applied to NYU and had a drag-out fight with my mother over it. She said, "I will not pay for you to go to school in the city."

I showed her.

Anyway, I found myself a receptionist job at a dot-com, convinced Julie to join me, and moved into an attic apartment in Yonkers. Three weeks later, my boyfriend and I broke up. Six months later, I was itching to get the hell out of Yonkers. Julie found a place in Westchester, and I found a place I couldn't afford on the Lower East Side.

Four years later, I actually could afford my apartment and had moved up the ranks at my dot-com to be a Web Producer. Then I got laid off at the end of 2002, which was a very bad time to be a Web Producer. I did what most laid off Web Producers did during that time – I contemplated a career change.

I thought about news, first and foremost. The thing is, you can't make the jump from an 86 market to the number 1 market, even without a four year gap. News was out. I thought about going back to school for social work. I thought about a lot of things and came up with a whole lot of nothin'. Seven months later, I landed another job as a Web Producer.

Two years later, I was pretty much over it, which worked out just fine because I got laid off. And that brings us to today. I started job hunting well before I was let go, which may or may not have contributed to my being let go. I hadn't thought about what I wanted to do, though. Earlier this week, I decided. News. I'm a news junkie and if you take out all the late 90s/early 2000s dot-com decadence and break it down into job functions, I liked news better than I liked web producing.

So I figured I'd try to find myself a Web Producer job for a news organization, kick ass and then weasel my way over to the TV side. Over the two days following this decision, I found SEVEN jobs. I applied to six out of seven, and now I wait in eager anticipation. If nothing happens on that front, I think I'll try to freelance until I can make it happen.

Oh, why did I only apply to six out of seven, you ask? Seven was Fox News.