Before I went to London, I spent roughly five years applying for arts administration jobs. Despite four arts admin internships, despite working my way through high school and college as an assistant with my mom's theatre company, despite two non-mom-related paid jobs in both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors (which I lost as the bottom dropped out of the economy), I considered it a good day when I got an automated response from a position to which I was applying. While wearing socks, I can count the number of interviews I booked. Now that I'm back in New York, with a freshly-minted Masters degree, I've sent out some inquiries in response to job postings. I'm still not getting responses.
At the moment, I'm scheduling auditions for a second cast of the show I produced in the summer of 2011. I sent out my audition offers on Thursday morning, requesting that people confirm their appointments. It's Saturday night (yes, I'm spending Saturday night blogging instead of going out and being young, single, and fabulous in New York City) and more than half of the people to whom we've offered audition slots have yet to confirm. 
I guess I just don't understand. I do whatever I can to get a job interview. Why bother to submit yourself for a role and not respond when you get the audition? 

This morning, I woke up without knowing the date. It's the first time in a decade that I didn't automatically know, that I didn't automatically imbue this day with significance. 
I'm writing this from the fifth floor Senate House Library in London, right near the Shakespeare section. I should be working on my Masters thesis, but, alas, I'm not. I should be writing my MA dissertation, but instead I'm thinking about how eleven years ago, I was in a very different library. I was writing a very different paper. Tonight, I'm meant to go out to dinner with extended family and then maybe see a friend. Eleven years ago tonight, I was meant to start my college search in earnest. I was meant to be in a hotel ballroom that ceased to exist that day. 
The world wasn't a safe place before the towers fell, I just didn't know it. The world still isn't a safe place, I just don't care. No. That's not accurate. I care a great deal. The world still isn't a safe place, I'm just not willing to cower in fear.  
Today might be a hard day for me. I might not write the 2,000 words I really do need to have by midnight. I need to give myself a break. It's okay to mourn- for the lives lost, for the sense of safety my country lost, for the innocence I lost- on that morning eleven years ago. But I must get through it, complete the work at hand, and keep moving forwards.