Ch-ch-ch-changes

Pardon the David Bowie allusion. It's the best I could do so late.

Since becoming unemployed at the beginning of July, I have thought a lot about where I would like to go and what I want to do. I am 25, single, renting space from my grandparents, have few major commitments in the Rochester area, and have entertained the idea of leaving the state for quite some time. I think I'm pretty good at what I do, and I'm pretty sure that if I had the chance, I could make a decent living as a designer.

After some thought, I narrowed the alternatives down to a few: I could get a job at a local design firm where I would likely find myself in the same situation a few years down the road. I could look for a job in one of the major design hot-spots around the country (New York, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta) where jobs are plentiful but I wouldn't know anyone. I could go to a city out-of-state where I know people (Nashville, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Pensacola) but the economic climate might be better, the same, or worse. Or I could get a temporary job in Rochester working part-time, probably for a sign company or print shop, and go to school at RIT and learn the web programming stuff that designers are pretty much required to know (despite it having little to do with design and not being included in most college-level graphic design programs).

So that leads me to now. Two and a half months later I am planning to move halfway across the country to Minneapolis, where my best friend moved in 11th grade, and where there are more and better design jobs than here in Rochester, NY. I am working with a temp agency, with a tentative start date of October 1st, if they can place me by then. I have traded my sports car for a pickup truck that I can fill with all my stuff. My scheduled departure time is my 26th birthday, September 24th. I don't know what the future holds, but I firmly believe that I need this kind of a drastic change in my life in order to progress and to grow as a person. I really can't explain it any more than that. It will be hard to leave my family and friends, but that's why I have to do it. It's probably comparable to when a guy joins the military -- it's about leaving behind the familiar comforts of home and trekking out on his own, becoming the person you know is inside and... well I'm getting all philosophical. Anyways, I'm running out of money and the options are dwindling. This seems like the best thing to do. I'll have another update someday, maybe in a few weeks.