Curdled skies

I'm all settled now in New York and it's funny how blogging just falls by the wayside. In the last couple weeks, I've graduated from my program, said goodbye to everyone in Georgia and then drove a Uhaul up to New York (Jeremiah may have helped quite a bit with that last one). 

In addition, I got a job as well! I'll be working for a media agency in the city and I start in a couple weeks. I'm super excited about the next few stages in my life.

I have quite a few outfit photos left from Georgia so I'll be sharing those over the coming days. This yellow vintage dress is one that sat in my closet for years until I decided to recently alter five inches off the length (as part of a graduation gift to myself, I took a few vintage dresses to get altered). Forgive the amount of photos here -- the clouds were so pretty that day I took photos that it was hard to edit down on this location. 

credits - dress, vintage, thrifted | shoes, target | jacket, aeropostale, thrifted | bag, stone mountain, thrifted. 

Home

I graduate from my master's program tomorrow, and in three days I'll be moving to New York City. My  fingers and body ache as I type this and ignore the packing tape and boxes currently strewn about in the living room. But I'm at a place where I'm really happy anyways, despite the scattered mess of moving my entire life.

That is a strange sentence to type: In three days, I will be moving to New York City. That's essentially been my dream since I was 11, ever since I started watching "Felicity" and "Friends" regularly and daydreamed about cityscapes and sidewalks. Since I chickened out from applying to NYU and Columbia because I couldn't deal with the remote possibility that they -- and by extension, the city, my city -- would reject me. It has been a dream that hit its fever pitch when I interned up there for three months in undergrad. And solidified this year, when Jeremiah moved up there and started building a home for us.

In three days, I will be ticking off my life dream.

I haven't really discussed much of my personal life on the blog this year. Part of it is because my blog has become a little more public, as I've opened up to more people in my program about it and have mentioned it in job interviews and things like that. 

Part of it is also that it has been a really hard year, being separated cross-country from Jeremiah. Our marriage was thrust into long distance very quickly when he moved up to New York, and I've been living down here, just finishing up school and work. On good days, the distance was my friend -- I could keep my head down, work on everything I needed to professionally without feeling pressure to come home at a reasonable hour. Personal projects (like building my online portfolio, learning to cook, writing spec scripts, hanging out with some of the best people ever) got done. And even small things like picking out my own groceries or taking the car wherever I wanted without consulting another person was a nice relief. And then there were the bad days -- being separated for months at a time, hating everything about living down in Georgia and feeling very stuck and lonely. 

I've mentioned before that I've essentially lived in the air space between New York and Georgia this year, as I've flown between the two every other month to visit Jeremiah and put all my dominoes together for a possible career and life up there. It's been weird, adjusting to figure out "home" -- having two residences but not feeling like I belonged at either of them. 

But.

None of that matters today.

Because today I'm picking up Jeremiah from the airport, and we'll be living together permanently in the same city. In three days I'll be trading my beloved car for public transit, and rural landscapes for skyscrapers.

I've learned a lot from Georgia in the last 17 years. I'll always have a soft spot for this state -- all of its beautiful, haunting and even twisted parts -- and the wonderful people here who I am fortunate enough to call family and friends.

In four days, I will be moving living in New York. And then I'll have to find a new life dream. 

Get lost

Happy Friday! Hope you have a chance to get lost this weekend (in the nicest, most adventure-est way possible). 

This photo is from one of my weekend trips to the covered bridge -- I really am going to miss that place!

Turquoise sky

Just a recent outfit that I've worn so many times this semester for different presentations. I love the abstract design against the landscapes. 

The bracelet is a recent vintage find -- it's very similar to my cougar bracelet that I still need to get repaired. Until then, it's a good replacement.

Forgive the brevity -- I'm in finals week! My final finals week ever.

credits - dress and shoes, target | blouse, banana republic | bracelet, vintage, finder's keepers.

Dizzy up the girl

I've mentioned my frustrations with photography many times on this blog. A new camera takes time getting used to, and whenever I nail the right composition, focus, lighting and pose, all the hours of effort and sweat feel worth it. 

But what about those mistakes? I've been poring over my Dropbox lately, and have come across a small collection of soft-focus self-portraits. Normally these would get deleted, but for some reason, I like them now. They skew reality and give off a hazy point-of-view, which is often how I feel whenever I take photos in the morning -- bleary-eyed and half-asleep.

The title of this post is from my favorite Goo Goo Dolls album -- it seemed appropriate for these blurry versions of myself.