money and more money: being a real person sucks

issue number 1:
so i've basically had my heart set on moving to nyc the past few weeks/months. when i accepted this job, even though i didn't want to be in new york, i told myself it was only on the condition that i would not be living at home.

however, last week, i was reading this book i'm in the middle of, called hope's edge, which is an amazing book. technically the sequel to diet for a small planet, it deals a lot more with the relationships between food consumption, production and global justice movements. a section i was reading on the trains that mornign made me really excited about all these potential avenues for creativity in the future, all these exciting alternative development projects, and as usual my thoughts turned to thinking about how i could be doing that now and wondering why i'm wasting my time in this job that really doesn't excite me or make much progress beyond a few hundred folks in a very minute manner.

my rationale for the past few weeks every other time i've been wondering this is that i need to get a head start, start making some money, and then after either i've worked a bit or i've gotten a graduate degree, i can go off and do my own thing. but this morning i realized that if i'm going to live in the city, i'm really not going to be saving much, if at all, depending on what rent ends up being and the lifestyle i choose to lead. and so, it seems, that i'm sort of just wasting a whole year, becasue i know what i'll be doing the whole year, unless i change jobs, and although i'm making a decent amount of money, i'll just spending a boatload of it on rent and living in this psycho city, when there's so much more i could be doing if i was a less risk-averse person.

so i've definitely been having some doubts about actually moving to the city, although i can't see staying in the position i'm in for much longer either. and the problem is, that if i can't stand my job after a few months, i won't be able to move somewhere else and do something else unless i find a subletter. but i will likely be living with two good friends, which would be great, and i'm hoping to get involved in stuff and meet lots of nwe people. it's just that the majority of my awake time will be spent at work, and it seems like it will mostly be a waste. i suppose what i can do, if i do move, is to keep looking for cooler jobs in nyc and then if i get one, switch jobs while staying in the apt.

but what i don't understand is how i can get a recommendation if i'm looking surreptitiously and don't want them to know.

issue number 2:
i've received a lot of credit card offers in the mail and have been trying to decide between them which one to get, because i do need to get a new credit card to replace the one i currently have and need to cancel which is tied to an ithaca local bank. i had been vaguely thinking abotu the working assets credit card, because it could be a concerete lifestyle action on my part towards supporting progressive organizing. however, after i decided to research the card a bit, to make sure there was nothign sketchy about it, i discovered this whole issue people had been discussing online- apparently the credit line for working assets is through MBNA, a financial group that donates heavily to the republicans. while this was not something i had thought about previously, after reading it did seem relevant, causing me to have doubts about that card.

someone's comment on that board mentioned the Salmon Nation card, through the ShoreBank/Pacific, which is a local Northwest US bank also linked with community development in Chicago. So now I've been thinking about that card, but I can't decide what to do and would welcome any suggestions.

P.S. This post was intended for Friday Aug. 26 or earlier but I didn't finish writing it, so it's only being posted now. However, none of the above issues have yet been resolved so it is still relevant.