yes, it's true that i'm in a new city, with new digs, new friends, new routines, new headaches. hell, i've even got a new name. what i do not have is a new direction. feeling rudderless, even in the best of circumstances, (and i consider "right here, right now" some damn fine circumstances) can give one pause. you'd think after all those "mid-twenties breakdowns", i would have obviated this rather cliched rite of passage. and yet...

i loved my last job. and i was quite good at it. and i assumed that having been quite good at it, i would stumble into a similar position at a similar company with a similar salary where i could just get on with it. not in THIS economy. and as my niche in the information technology world grows ever more competitive, i begin to contemplate "career change". career change, you say? how drastic. not so much, but for any career change to succeed, the changee has to know what he or she wants to change to.

and there's the rub. i ain't got the slightest. probably because after i left law school, i never thought seriously about career again. remember that i stumbled into my last job. right place, right time. and i loved it not because of anything in my job description or the perks or the raises or the promotions (oh, i liked those; don't get me wrong), but because of the people and the challenges and the feeling useful. so, something with great people, where i feel challenged and useful is the career for me, you say? now, you see the quandary. who doesn't want that? my mother suggested reading "what color is your parachute?". this suggestion led to drunken (and therefore repeated) utterings of this phrase emphasizing the YOUR, engendering undisguised disdain at this weekend's fish fry and for this, i am uniquely penitent and slightly embarrassed.

so, here am i, finally trying to decide what it is that i want to be when i grow up. if i take the former ms. ciccone as my archetype, i can be as follows: trendsetter, singer, actress, mystic, model, mommy, wife, exhibitionist, dictator, dancer, award-winner, provocateur, superstar. and that's just the beginning. the sky's the limit!

what do you think i should be?