"After mystery comes suspense. After suspense, comes romance."

Today was my first day as the new shopgirl at Epilogue books, People's Pick for the Best Independent Bookstore in Seattle. They offered me the job on Monday, but I was pretty sure I had it in the bag right after my interview on Thursday, and I thought long and hard about it until Tuesday, then impulsively called and said yes.
Because, really, chances like this are limited to a very short period of your life. By which I mean, when I'm thirty, there's no way I could take a 30-hour job at 8.50 an hour with the blithe thought that if worse comes to worst, my parents could help me pay rent. Part of me thinks I should feel more ashamed of refusing to join the real world, now that I have four-years of private college under my belt. But, hey, I still don't have a degree, so what's the problem?

I think what pushed me over the edge, to say yes, to jump into the future of being as poor as ever, was the interview I had yesterday for an "Executive Assistant" position. During the two minutes I waited in the reception area, three different people asked if I wanted coffee, and one even said, "Are you sure?" In the interview, they started pulling out those questions, that we all hate, that even interviewers probably hate, that come straight out of a circle of hell, I'm pretty sure. "Describe a time when a challenging situation arose and you implemented a solution." That's actually the only one I can remember, they were so boring. The kicker was when they asked what my restaurant manager would say about me if they called him, and after an awkward pause I decided to just come out and say it: "Well, actually, he died." More awkward pausing. But however well and badly the interview went, and in this case I really couldn't say which it was, I realized something. Even if it was a "gateway" job at a well-known and well-to-do company, I couldn't respect it at all. It would be the kind of place where I would look around me and think, "Why are all my coworkers throwing themselves into careers here, spending even their Saturdays doing things that just, well, things that the world might be better off without?" And on top of that, putting so much effort into projecting the image of "professional" - wearing uncomfortable and boring clothes, making forced chit-chat, never using profanity, never showing personality. I don't know how to explain this fully, but there was an absence of...reality, somehow. It just bothers me when things seem forced. It seemed like the kind of place where nothing spontaneous ever happens.

And something spontaneous did happen, the second I walked into the bookstore. It felt like the right place to be. The suspense of not being employed is over. Let the romance, of having the job every Seattleite wants, begin.