giddyiguana

Well, well, well. No updates since last summer. When y'all last heard from me, I was mooching a bedroom at a friend's house on the west side of Spartanburg, driving a 1998 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight with major cooling-system issues, and working at a gas station while moonlighting as a field organizer for a Presidential campaign....

It's amazing how much your life can change in six short months.

Well, first things first. I got a new car (well, not exactly "new"...it's a new-to-me 2006 Ford Taurus) that I'm going to be paying on for the next five years. Yay, finance charges!

I also moved back into a place of my own. Well, ok, not "my own," exactly...I'm living with three other people. But it's a spacious three-bedroom townhouse in a quiet neighbourhood on the east side of town, so we're not exactly tripping over each other. My roommates? Gina (of course), Richard (yes, THAT Richard...my old roommate from USC Upstate), and Zach (a friend-of-a-friend with whom I took a few classes at Upstate.) But I don't know how long we'll be here. We're on a lease that runs through next August, BUT...our landlord is also trying to sell this place and has asked us if we'd mind moving out early if she sells it.

Which may not be a bad idea...

See, the Bill Richardson for President campaign transferred me to Iowa for the last two months of the race there. It was probably the hardest job I've ever held. It was the only position I've ever had where I could spend fifteen hours a day at the office and still feel like I didn't have enough time to accomplish everything I needed to do. But it was also the most rewarding job I've ever held. I learned volumes about how a campaign SHOULD be run and met some of the most wonderful people I've ever known in the process. No, the results on caucus night weren't even close to what we were hoping for, but, oh, well. I'm still proud of everything we did accomplish. We forced all the "major" candidates to talk about the issues that were important to us and to take positions on them that they never would have otherwise. From our aggressive energy and environmental policies to our hard line on the Iraq war to scrapping "No Child Left Behind" to overturning the PATRIOT Act, our platform was easily the most plagiarized in recent history. Don't be surprised when Governor Richardson ends up with a cabinet post when the Democrats take back the White House.

And on a personal front...thanks to my association with this campaign, I now know half the state government of New Mexico. This is already beginning to pay dividends. See, one of my "roadrunners" (our out-of-state volunteers) was a well-connected state representative from Las Cruces. After I explained to her my education situation, she made some phone calls and not only got me admitted to New Mexico State University this fall, but also got me a job with a U.S. Senate campaign as soon as I get there. And that's not all...one of my other contacts within the Richardson campaign has notified me regarding a two-year energy/climate fellowship opportunity with the National Resources Defense Council in New Mexico. I haven't heard back about that yet, but at this point I can safely say that all signs are pointing towards one conclusion:

Go west, young man!

So....there you have it. I'm currently broke and unemployed (again), but that won't last long. My only mission now is to get back to work and raise the money it's going to take to move cross-country.

And, in all honesty, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be kicking around this website. To be sure, it's still fun (and still relatively spam-free compared to MySpace and Facebook), but I don't know if I have the time and money to devote to being on here nearly as much as I once was. We'll see how things stand when my current subscription runs out whether or not I return.

Regardless, I've made some great friends here and it'd be a shame to lose 'em all entirely, so stay tuned....