with fall approaching...

My dad got a new car at the end of May because I needed transportation for my summer internship. I drove this car all summer, even after I moved from Buffalo back to Albany for the last month of my break from school. I am now in Boston, waiting anxiously for my semester to start and due to logistics surrounding Jon and Ellie’s honeymoon, my car is in Boston for the next week. I was driving around downtown Boston the other day and was shocked to see the mileage creep over the 8000 mark. The car was gently used—thirty-one miles—when we got it and now, after four short months I have driven over eight thousand miles.

August was a whirlwind month. With Agnese visiting from Italy, we traveled to New York City to see In The Heights, we camped on Cape Cod, spent a few days in Boston and set up our life in a hotel in Buffalo for the greater part of a week as we prepared for and celebrated Jon and Ellie’s perfect wedding. It went off without a hitch, as did the rest of the months adventures.

Agnese flew back to Italy on the 23rd of August and I turned around and started preparing for my move back to Boston, with no breaks and no time to reflect on the pure insanity that was this amazing summer.

I am currently sitting in my bedroom at school, in the aftermath of an unpacking war. With everything in it’s rightful place I can finally take a deep breath and appreciate the beginning of a new semester and the prospect of the new characters I will meet. I am so excited for the opportunities I had this summer: unexpected and invigorating. I feel as though I wasted little time, and in return have been rewarded with experiences I can store as professionally and personally useful. I have grown up, if just a tad, and I am so grateful to everything and everyone who was a part of it. Thank you.

starting summer

I am home from Buffalo and so excited to finish up my summer and prepare to move back to Boston. Before I go back to school, there are a few things I have to do...

--camping on the Cape (leaving tomorrow)
--NYC with Agnese (visiting from Italy!)
--Jon and Ellie's Wedding

I have so much to look forward to and so many people to spend time with. I'm excited to finish up my summer surrounded by the people that I love.

just over the rainbow bridge

Living in Buffalo definitely has its perks; not only are the real estate prices low and wings hot, the proximity to Canada is very desirable. The Niagara Falls are one of the great natural landmarks in this part of the world. The Falls are absolutely beautiful and their force and power are breathtaking the first time you see them. They are also a tourist trap, including Clifton Hill, a strip akin to Vegas or Times Square: trashy and flashy. Niagara Falls is about a twenty or thirty minute drive from my current residence in Buffalo, so it would have been a shame to not make an appearance.

Two good friends from Albany came out to Buffalo for the weekend and we crossed the border for two days of responsibly careless fun. We stayed in a sketchy hostel and made it our mission to do everything we don’t or can’t do in our own country.

While on a tour of the Hillebrand Winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario we met a nice middle-aged couple from Toronto. They were very nice, as per the Canadian stereotype and via their suggestion, we ended up at a chocolate store down the street. One thing led to another and this suggestion led to free chocolate-covered strawberries, which we took as an obvious omen to visit every destination suggested by local or Canadians. This took us on an adventure that proved to be amazing, placing us in an Irish pub, a country-store specializing in gourmet peanuts, a few too many Tim Horton’s, and loveable Canadian-chain restaurants.

I think this is a really amazing travel tip. Ask questions and listen to the people who live in the areas you’re exploring. You can research and read reviews other travelers have written, but for an authentic experience, the little things count. There is no way we would have stopped at this run-down chocolate factory, or a random country peanut store if we weren’t told to, and that we would have really missed out!

We had a great time. The weekend was exactly what I needed: to see my friends and stop worrying for a minute about my future. We made “friends” from all over the world (Canada, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, and the unidentified home of the newly engaged girl we took a picture with). We roughed it in a hostel and the whole weekend made me so excited for my semester in Europe, Spring 2011!

guppy

I need an internship for the fall in Boston. I have been applying to publishing companies around the city, but so far to no avail. I have been sending resumes left and right, but so many companies have already found interns for the fall. A few haven’t responded yet, so I am going to send second inquiries.

I am a little nervous that I will never be able to find an internship (or on a grander scale, a job) in a big city. As much as I have enjoyed working at Prometheus in Amherst, it is in Amherst, New York. I don’t want to be a big fish in a small pond; I don’t want to live in a small town or the suburbs of a rust-belt city. I want to be a guppy: a guppy in Boston, New York, London, or San Francisco. I know that when the time comes I will get a job where I can find one. I will not be Rory Gilmore circa the eighth season of Gilmore Girls.

In other news, I am growing more pretentious every day. Yesterday Ellie and I went to a bookstore and I bought the most recent issue of McSweeney’s. I then drank my bold brew from Café Aroma and laughed aloud at sarcasm from writers with inflated egos.

bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day

My time at Prometheus is coming to an end. My last day is a week from tomorrow. It’s so bizarre to be thinking of leaving. I finally know where everything is, what I’m doing, and how to do it. I know where the commas go and that quotations go on the outside of the period at the end of the sentence. I’ve learned a lot about myself and so much about publishing. The field no longer has this shield of mystery. I know what to expect from a company that works to produce well-written, and well-designed books that reinforce the morals and ideas by which Prometheus was built.

I’ve learned that I am genuinely interested in becoming an editor. I met with Jade, an assistant editor at Prometheus. She has worked there for a year, and graduated from Ithaca College in 2008. We met to talk about her job, as she is doing exactly what I hope to do in a few years. Talking with her, I realized that in editing books, I would be a life-long student: learning something new from each new book. I never want to fall into a job where I am not using my brain. I never want to stop learning.

I am a writer, or at least that’s what I tell myself, but I am not going to try to build a career around unreliable jobs. I want to work with other writers in making their great ideas better. If I can be part of the process that distributes important discourse to a greater public, I will feel as if I have done my job. Books, in print and online (alright, I’ll acknowledge the e-book phenomenon) are vital to society as a whole. Literature shouldn’t be a hobby available to a pretentious niche. Books, nonfiction and otherwise are important enough for me to feel as though I want to work with them for the greater part of my life.

I have realized the passion I have always felt for literature and book publishing is not unfounded. That is probably the most significant thing I have taken from this internship. Even working with the trivial details of the industry, I appreciate it for the experience I have gained.

Thank you, Prometheus, for teaching me not only to carry the torch of secular understanding and reason with a set of humanistic ideals, but also to continue on the academic path I have started on; to lay the bricks for my future.

A note to the nonexistant people reading this blog: Buy books from Prometheus, they're not all crazy-atheist. Do it!