Another Year Older, Another Year Wiser??

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome back to the Flaviana Blog.  As some of you may have noticed, there was a noticeable absence of blog postings last month - largely because I was busy with a temp job where I was being paid actual money to write and edit articles that will be published in a book later this year.  (Ahh, if only I had known my writing was good enough to earn me a living before I went to law school....but I digress...) 

Fortunately (or unfortunately) for all of you, one of my new year's resolutions is to be more diligent about posts to my blog!  So let's get started, shall we?



As some of you know, to me, early January is not merely the start of the new year.  It also marks the anniversary of my birth.  And yesterday, as I was celebrating my birthday with a blueberry martini at the Foshay, I began thinking about how much my life has changed in the past year.  Last year, on my 30th birthday, if someone had walked into my office, gotten my attention between a client phone call and unscheduled walk in, and told me "this time, next year you will be living in Minneapolis", I would have probably laughed and said "quit giving me false hope with these lies, liar!"  Odds are, I probably would have had the same reaction if someone, in the fall of 2000, had come up to my 20 year-old self, as I was pouring over Poli Sci text books at the Purple Onion (a coffee shop near the U of MN campus) and said, "you know, by this time, next year you'll be studying torts and civ pro at Columbia Law School." 

But that's what's funny about life - you never know where it will take you.  As a little girl, I would have never guessed that I would spend my 20's living in New York City.  Or that I would marry a guitarist turned lawyer from LA with killer brown eyes.  And, after nearly 10 years in New York, I would have never guessed that Flavio and I would wind up in Minnesota.  But low and behold, that's exactly what happened - at 21, I moved to New York to go to law school, at 23, I met Flavio, of the guitar playing and lovely brown eyes, and at 30, I went from an overworked, underpaid, yet fulfilled non-profit immigration lawyer in New York City to a rested, former non-profit lawyer in Minneapolis, enjoying her sabbatical from the law.

And how do I feel about the dramatic changes that have taken place in the past year?  Like any major change in life, it comes with mixed feelings.  Not a day goes by that I don't miss living in New York.  I miss the energy of the city. I miss the unlimited supply of tasty, cheap ethnic food.  I miss picking up bagels on Saturday morning at the deli down the street.  From time to time, I even miss my old job - long hours, bad pay and all. 

On the other hand, while New York City is a great place to live when you're single and in your 20's, it's not so great when you're married, in your 30's and getting ready to start a family.  (If you've ever seen some poor lady hauling a stroller up and down the stairs of a subway terminal, you know exactly what I mean.) And, even if I wasn't thinking about having kids, day to day life in the city just wears you down.  Pretty much everything is a struggle - constantly elbowing through crowds to get where you need to go, only being able to buy as many groceries as you can carry, and don't get me started on becoming a sticky sweaty mess after 5 min on the subway platform in the summer - ugg, all things I do not miss.  Also, all things being equal, I prefer to raise my kids in Minnesota - it's clean, the cost of living is much more reasonable, the public schools are great and most importantly my family is here.

To put it another way, at some point, we all have to grow up, and as much as I miss New York, at the end of the day, both Flav and I understand that growing up meant moving and starting the next chapter in Minnesota.

So where will I be on my 32nd birthday?  Only time will tell...