In Medias Res

In media res. Translation? In the middle of things. It's a common literary device and, as a graduate from Yale with a B.A. in English and a veteran of four years of high school Latin, it's a phrase I'm rather fond of. It's also an accurate for where I am right now. I'm in the middle.

"In the middle of what?", you ask. Well, of a lot of things. Immediately following my graduation from college I officially moved from my hometown of Austin, TX to NYC, which is definitely a city in the middle of things. What other city can rightfully be called simply, "the City". Sure, it has many other things, but this is the most common around these parts, and it's appropriate.

But I'm also in the middle of a huge transition in my life. One from adolescent to adult. Popular culture likes to portray the leap into adulthood as more of a "before and after" event, as in, before 18 you're an adolescent, and after, you're an adult. But for most, if not ALL human beings in America, this change is a much lengthier transition.

For instance, a lot of people, myself included, have a four-year (at least) period between when we're 18 and when we can REALLY be considered an adult, known as college. Sure, you can say you're an adult throughout college and you are capable of drinking, choosing sexual partners and making a variety of relatively mature decisions without a permission slip from your parents. But is college really the real world? Mine certainly wasn't. It was a beautiful bubble where food, friends and parties were plentiful. If you ever went out into the REAL real world (via Metro North train to Grand Central), you had college to retreat to if it became too much.

But the REAL real world (i.e. life AFTER college) has no retreat. It's there ALL THE TIME. And you can hide under the covers and watch romantic comedies and cooking shows like a hermit in your apartment, but it's still happening all around you. And that's when the transition truly begins.

So, rather than be the only living person alive without a blog, I thought I'd invite the world to jump, into the middle of my transition from a Southern gal (though Austin is arguably not really a "Southern-style" town, but more like California) to a "funky urban girl" (something I always joked with my mother about wanting to become; someone who wore colored tights and felt comfortable crimping their hair and wearing mismatched eye shadow because it was the new trend). It's a long, long road and you're welcome to join me in medias res...