My life consists of three things right now.

1. Working 10-14 hours a day.

2. Coming home and studying for the LSAT. (October 2, for all those who wish to send me gifts and chocolates.)

3. ABBA.

I suddenly feel so old. (Well, besides the ABBA part, which is more 14-year-old-girl-esque.) I have a real job, where I sit in real meetings and make real decisions. Today I led a series of interviews for a vacant position, helped set the criteria, checked references, made the ultimate hiring decision, and wrote letters of acceptance/rejection. Last night I facilitated a board of directors meeting and walked the board through a series of activities that I created to help them develop a mission statement and draft bylaws. Last week I was at the Dept of Ed in a meeting with the high muckety-mucks helping to develop policy about teacher licensure under No Child Left Standing.

It has all been a fun ride, this job. Every day I feel like the essay for my law school applications is writing itself. Not only that, but I feel SO much more confident than I did before I started two years ago. I always saw myself as a behind-the-scenes type of worker--not a decision maker. That all has changed since I started this job because I feel confident when I walk into a room. I think I bring something to the table now, which I honestly couldn't say after graduating from college in 2002.

So yay me, in other words. I feel like I have my shit together. My apartment is a nightmare and the interior of my car is a train wreck, but besides that I feel like I have my little duckies in a row right now.

It's some good shit.

In other news, I have my first official publication coming out this month. Actually two of them in the same professional journal for educators. One article is about a nationwide survey of performing arts attendance and interest in five major U.S. cities--Mpls/St. Paul among them. The other article is about a publication that we just produced at the place where I work. It's a curriculum guide for arts teachers and its a pretty damn amazing resource, if I do say so myself. (I didn't write that in the article, BTW.)

I think I'll have a party to celebrate my first official publication. Maybe that is tacky, but I'm actually craving an excuse to have people over at my place again. My disco ball creaks in the wind. My bottle of Chambord grows dusty.