The Progress: In which persistence finally pays off

Friday began with a bit of bad news when I received an email informing me that the SEO Trainee position I was to be interviewing for on Monday had been filled. Sure, I could still interview on Monday if I wanted because there was the real possibility that another position could open within the next few weeks if the company landed the couple big bids it had going on.

I was reading the email on my cell phone at my current job while preparing for an afternoon function in which overly fussy Austin-area businesswomen were going to be getting a rather cheap lunch and talking about more efficient ways to use their Twitter and Facebook accounts (or something like that ... maybe I just heard both mentioned several times because, well, they were women and that's seemingly all they ever talk about anymore). As soon as I ran into my general manager, he informed me that he had received a complaint about me from one of the guests at one of the previous evening's events. Apparently I acted "rude" when she asked to have something wrapped up. I asked for something more specific since I didn't know what I could've done wrong and was only told "not to let it happen again."

I've been looking high and low for anything other than a restaurant job for years now, and while this new place that represents my first job since arriving in Texas has certainly become more profitable in recent weeks, at that moment it was beginning to feel as though even this job was now on shaky ground.

Fast-forward a couple hours to the middle of the event on Friday afternoon and another email has come in. This one is a reply from somebody I interviewed with almost two weeks ago for a writing job. Since I hadn't heard from her earlier in the week, by about Wednesday I was assuming they went with somebody else. Still, I opened the email and thought it began with the obligatory thank you for coming in the previous week. Familiar with how these rejections typically go, I was sure the next line would be some variation of either "we've decided to go with another candidate," or "we can not extend you an offer at this time."

The Adjustment: Has it been two months already?

There's the part of me that just wants to refer back to what I said a little over a year ago at this time when I recognized that there's typically a lull in posting during the summer. But even looking back on that post, it's hard to believe that I wasn't writing more often when I didn't have a regular job at that point. And perhaps most surprising would be that I still had no idea that what was going on between ™ and I would lead me to being here right now living with her in Austin. It's all still very incredible.

I've wanted to write about a number of things that have happened over the past couple months, like the short visit from my parents or the weekend her siblings spent here, but alas ... this is the first time I've had enough time to really sit with my laptop and pound out a few thoughts. Don't get me wrong; when I last wrote about life down here in Texas, I was stressing about finding a job. Of course, a few weeks later, I got one. And now it eats up a majority of my week. This is how life works, I'm told.

The Arrival: In which just getting here was an adventure

After ™ last flew up to Illinois to spend a long weekend with me between her birthday and my own, I reminded her at the airport that the following three weeks until I saw her again would go by pretty fast. I had been saying it primarily to comfort her that unlike, say, the more than two months before that visit when we'd last been able to see one another, this final step was going to arrive much faster. And sure enough, before I knew it—before I'd even remembered to formally change my address, before I'd been able to land a job to start when I arrived, before I'd finished packing ALL of my belongings—I was at O'Hare on May 18 boarding a one-way flight to Texas.

We first moved ™'s stuff from the Houston area to our new apartment in Austin, and then the following day began the roughly 19-hour drive back to St. Charles. While the original plan was to drive as much as we could on the first day and find a hotel when we got tired, we instead ended up stopping for a bite to eat in Memphis that evening and just staying on the road until we arrived at my parents' house early that Saturday morning. After catching some shuteye, we had some rather lackluster Pizza Hut for dinner that evening with my parents and my aunt and uncle. Later that night, we went out with a couple friends of mine in downtown St. Charles.

Over the course of those three weeks between ™'s visits, I kept waiting for the moment that the relocation was really going to hit me. But even as I reminded myself that certain visits I was making could be my last for quite some time, it still didn't seem real.

What stuck with me that last night in St. Charles had to be a moment outside one of the bars just after last call. ™ was hugging me and a girl I'd never met before but was was apparently a friend of one of my friends looked at us and wondered aloud to us why she couldn't have something like ™ and I had. The girl, probably somewhere in her mid-twenties, had just gotten out of a long-distance relationship.

When other friends and co-workers used words like "jealous" or such in response to learning my relocation plans, I had sort of downplayed it as them just being nice. But on that last night, something in that one girl's eyes finally made me feel lucky. After three or so years of convincing myself nobody else in their right mind would ever want to be in my shoes, I finally experienced a real moment of having somebody else saying they wanted what I had.

Ultimately, I was only beginning to realize how lucky I was.

The Countdown: Three becomes two

In this area, we've endured what I was told was a record amount of snow last month, but now nearly every last sign of white has all but disappeared and it's getting closer to being so comfortable outside that I can once again sit on the stoop in front of the house, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and complete a puzzle or two. It's now becoming more frequent for the morning to begin with me actually asking myself, "Do I need a coat for this?"

But the shift feels a little bit more substantial this particular spring at this particular time, and not just because it appears that the shovel's not going to be looked at again until Thanksgiving. I'd be more giddy about the prospect of sitting outside for a couple hours again to start the day if I were even able to stand still right now.

That's largely because more than three years after I was being arrested for another DUI, I had my probation terminated early last Thursday. And now without any more check-ins at the courthouse to essentially document that I've been staying out of trouble, I'm finally free to go do whatever I want.

It's still sinking in as to what that even feels like. After three years of being what I described as a "prisoner of the state," I've now got two months to take advantage of this newfound supposed freedom.