Evidently, I love an audience.
It took one mere person telling me that they had read some of my old blog posts to rally me into returning here: my old attention-whore stomping grounds. (The fact that I recently moved into a studio with no cable and spotty access to pirated internet has, mind you, nothing to do with it. This post is an ode to my slim base of loyal reader(s); not an attempt to entertain myself in an apartment lacking in the most basic of modern distractions).
First – let’s power through the administrative details. I am no longer an intern. Valentine’s Day marked my first day as an Assistant Account Executive with Weber Shandwick. I won’t bore you with the laundry list of impressive perks coming to a salaried employee, but just so we’re all on the same page—yes, I do have dental benefits, paid vacation and I even upgraded from my intern “pit” to my AAE “pod”. Next, I moved. A former fellow intern recently got a job with an upscale resort in Panama (to clarify - the country, not the Spring Break den of undergrad venereal diseases). She needed someone to sublease her studio for two months; I needed somewhere to live now that I’m logging non-intern hours – convenient, no?
So – what’s on my mind now that I am officially a member of that once-elusive “real world”? Here’s a few tidbits:
1). Finbarr Flynn: The first interview that I officially arranged for one of my clients was with this man: a Dublin-based, Irish economics reporter by the name of Finbarr. While shooting off professional emails to Finbarr coordinating the date, time and content of the interview (about the status of the Irish fund industry, nonetheless), I wondered what college-Michelle would even think of the new grown-up-me. On the one hand, I think the phrase ‘Irish fund industry’ would cause a look of complete and utter incomprehension to cross her face – and further, the early hours required to catch Finbarr in his time zone might just kill her. Yet, landing a placement in Bloomberg with a wackily-named Dubliner could be worse. And at some point, inevitably, we all must sacrifice the hours that never-took-a-class-before-9:30am college-Michelle managed to wrangle…
2). Yellowtail: Living at home for eight months, I become accustomed to dad’s good wine. And mom’s good cooking. Also, the mom-laundry service and lunch-packing. So it should have been a smack in the grown-up face when I had to regress back to my college-years and a). start fending for myself once again and b). accept a serious downgrade in alcohol quality. Strangely enough, though, my old friends Pastaroni and $5 Chardonnay have never tasted so sweet as that first night in my new apartment. Aside from really desperately missing cable, everything about the grown-up lifestyle—from the microscopic kitchen sans dishwasher in my baby studio to the low quality wine I drink out of glasses that must be handwashed on a nightly basis (see lack of dishwasher)—has an exciting ring of independence to it.
Once again, I promise not to let a huge lapse in time pass before my next post. And this time, with only my bargain wine and the inconstant Linksys-access for company – I suspect it’s a promise I can easily maintain.
