Given my new job, this blog's likely to get a lot more arty. For starters, witness this peculiar "outdoor installation."

From the artist's statement:

"A cabinet will be constructed and left on a sidewalk. I will be hidden inside and not reveal myself until someone assumes possession and brings the cabinet to their home."

Now, I'm all for art that doesn't fit into the confines of a frame, but does this little social experiment (as further outlined at this site: http://confluxfestival.org/conflux2008/910/), qualify more as art or as a prank on the order of Ashton Kutcher's shenanigans?

I'll withhold judgment until tomorrow, when this character will be Twittering and Flickring the entire thing live from inside the cabinet at http://lucasmurgida.blogspot.com/. This should be hilarious.

Well, Facebook has had the exclusive online scoop on this news for about a week now, so if you're not getting your breaking news there, then I'm sorry, my friend, but you're still living in the dark ages of Xanga.

OK, here it is: I have a new job as public relations coordinator for the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I leave my current job on August 22 and I assume my new post on September 2. I think it'll be a pretty sweet gig that will stretch me both personally and professionally, and I'm hoping--praying--that it'll be less stressful than my current job, and just an all-around better situation than what my current job has handed me.

I don't mean to sound so negative. The past three years have been good, overall. I'm blessed to have gotten a job in publishing--in magazines, even--right out of college, and that that job never involved answering phones or making coffee for somebody else. (Although, I was asked to go on a beer run on my very. first. day. But that was an isolated incident; my boss promised me that it'd be the first and last time, and it was.) I got to do some pretty cool things, meet some really interesting people, and work with an incredibly talented group. I wrote stories, sometimes even feature stories. If I were at most any national mag, I'd still be vying for 100-word clips at this point in my career. I have a solid portfolio, solid connections, and a solid awareness that I can do this magazine thing.

But at the end of the day? At the end of the day, I don't want to do it. I want to go home at five, to have a relaxing evening and to do normal things like eat dinner with my husband. (Call it what you will: Balance. Normalcy. Sanity.) Thus far I've managed to resist what is the unwritten rule in this business--that the magazine, it owns your days, your nights, your weekends, for as long as there is a deadline in view. And there is ALWAYS a deadline in view. But I couldn't move my career forward and still expect the same--gasp!--luxury of a normal 40-ish-hour workweek--something that is perfectly acceptable, nay, encouraged for people in professions that yield two, three, four times the salary I make. No job is worth sacrificing your health, your happiness, your loved ones over, and I won't do it.

So there's that.