In less than a week I'm going to Hawaii for my friend Lisa's wedding. I know! I KNOW! How can a person work when there's a trip to HAWAII in the near future? What's more, J can't come due to the fact that in the next couple months he will wrap up all six years of grad school and become a PhD, and while this is undeniably tragic (both because he will miss out on a Hawaiian vacation and also because God knows what will happen to him while I'm away) it also means that for the first four days of the trip it will be all girls - me and some of my high school friends, some of my best friends ever, traipsing around Oahu, where we've rented a house on the North Shore. Just the girls, like in high school, and this is going to make it all the more ridiculous. We leave Tuesday. Friday we fly to Kauai for the weekend, and the wedding takes place Sunday.

It's ok if you're angry that I'm going on the best trip of all times. I forgive you.

While it's been really hard to concentrate lately on anything other than buying sundresses, I also feel this sense of urgency, due to the fact, I think, that I'm going on this awesome trip while my husband will be home working hard on microbiology stuff that I can't even begin to explain so he can get his doctorate. That's what he's been up on in the midst of my, you know, writing a few articles here and there for newspapers, and then writing here on this blog, which, by the way, does not exactly pay at all.

So I've started to look for jobs up north, both in Connecticut and in New York, and I'm looking at anything and everything because I don't think there's any need to sell myself short and not have a great and fulfilling job doing something totally amazing (see? see my positive thinking in action? that's how I convince myself to apply for positions I'm totally not qualified for).

The problem is, I mean, after three years working in an outpost office for a rural, weekly paper, where I had a lot of freedom, and then working as a freelance writer for the better part of this past year, I've gotten used to things. Like...say...not getting up that early. I don't sleep in til 10 or anything, come on, but I also don't get up at 6:30. Sometimes I take the afternoon to work on writing projects of my own, that may or may not pan out someday, and sometimes I go to yoga in the middle of the day. At first I hated these things. I craved structure and, honestly, I still do a lot of the time. But in a lot of ways I dig this life I've created, and when looking at jobs I start to think about things I'm not willing to do. And the things I'm going to need. And it's kind of a long list.

Like, how I don't want to work in a boring office. I don't want anything to do with new and cutting-edge technology, so if the word "software" appears in the description, it's out. I love children but don't want to necessarily work with companies that do things to benefit children because I feel like there's a lot of complaining about the bureaucracy that comes with that. I don't want to be yelled at. I want to learn new skills, especially because I don't have that many, but I don't want to have to learn, like, thousands of new skills. I absolutely will not, no matter how much you pay me, cover any more town board, school board or planning board meetings. I want to have dinner with my husband, preferably before 11 p.m., from time to time, so I'm not interested in working at night. I have a feeling that having a "keen eye for detail" means I should be a good speller, and should know other things, like basic geography, so that's probably not a good fit. I wouldn't mind working for a non-profit but not if half my day is going to be spent explaining to people why we don't have any money, and why we should, and the other half of my day is going to be spent in my office with tan carpet and a 1990 desktop computer we "salvaged" from the dump. I'd like to bring my dog to work but I don't want to work with or for any other animals. I'd like to work for a company that occasionally sends me on business trips where I get to stay in a nice hotel room. A decent bathroom in the office would be a plus. So would coffee in the morning. I don't want to sell anything. I want to go to company parties, I'll even plan them. I'd like coworkers who I can have a drink with after work. I don't want to work from home, unless I want to work from home on any particular day, and when I do want to do that there should be no questions asked. I want to change the world, but I don't necessarily want to go into politics or environmentalism or anything, I just want to someone to realize my talent, whatever it is, hire me, and pay me a decent amount. I want to do a great job at it, and I definitely want to be allowed to wear jeans while I'm doing it.

So, I think I'll probably find something pretty soon. I mean, at least I have some standards.