These days, if I need to bring it up at all, I tell people that I graduated from college "a couple years ago." Full disclosure: next Wednesday, in fact, marks two years to the day since graduation, and not coincidentally two years since my first post on second set of baby steps. (I'll be posting something different and special, so make sure to tune in!)
I don't think I would have believed you if you told me then what I would be doing now, two years down the line. I'm in a leadership position, at a for-profit company, doing marketing, of all things. I work in a field, like they always say, that was barely beginning to exist when I started college. I wear business casual, black and grey and brown, without patterns, for the most part. I am learning corporate jargon and business savvy. I read newsletters from LinkedIn. I get jazzed about examples of PR and marketing in the real world.
I live in Delaware, not with my parents -- but I do hang out with them for fun. I live in a city. I'm in a long-term, serious romantic relationship. I have a smartphone. I read nonfiction books for fun. I listen to NPR every day -- in fact, I am a member of my "local" (Philadelphia) public radio station. I go to church (only once a month or so, but still). I chaperone youth trips and activities, for God's sake!
I made my first green smoothie last night. (It was OK. I think I put too much banana in it.) I get excited about having 15 minutes to myself from time to time.
I wouldn't have guessed, when I was struggling to stay awake through my commencement ceremony almost two years ago, that this would be my life now. It's too much like what The Institutions told me I should be. I'm living "the dream."
And I like it, don't get me wrong. But part of me feels like I skipped right over my twenties. I skipped over the $100-a-month-stipend years in service to my society. I never lived in NYC or L.A. or the Twin Cities. My waiting tables phase was three months long. I loved it, for awhile. I have never been in a band. I don't go to concerts in coffeeshops, or hang out with starving artists (I do spend a decent amount of time with people who actually make a living doing art and writing, which is infinitely less hipster and can get depressing). I don't own a bicycle. I don't have beer for dinner on the regular. (Only on occasion.) I rarely day drink. I'm not sure I even have any beer in my fridge right now.
Last year, when I lived at home, I used to tell my mom that I hoped I would never become un-fun. I used to pray fervently that I would always be able to keep things in perspective, and never get dragged down by the humdrum and hurdles of adult life. I wanted never to take myself too seriously.
But I can already feel my mind growing inflexible in certain ways. I am resistant when the new people at work propose an idea I "know won't work." I haven't written a poem in weeks.
I made a very conscious decision not to stay in the Midwest, and I don't regret that. But part of me is jealous of my friends who all live together in Uptown, crash on each other's couches when they stop being able to pay rent, do idealistic jobs for community-focused nonprofits that can't really afford to pay them for the work they do -- but they truly are making a positive impact! They feature in each other's Instagram pictures, lit up in psychedelic pinks and purples, with up-and-coming Indie musicians onstage in the background and heavily garnished cocktails in the foreground.
I don't even like Indie music, and I still wish I was in those Instagrams.
This sounds pretty bitter. I'm not, really. I have invested a lot in my life the way it is now, and the return on that investment fulfills me beyond my expectations. I feel very lucky to have found the places and the work and the people I have found here.
So, what am I getting at, then?
I guess I'm just missing my friends, the classmates I was clinging to so literally two years ago, and the dreams we had. I'm afraid that I am becoming boring. I'm too responsible, and too scared of the world as it is uncovered before me, to be the fearless explorer I wanted to always be.
And yet, I am relieved at the relative lack of drama and crisis in my regular life. (Knock on wood!) It is nice when a lot of things stay pretty much the same for extended periods of time, and I don't have to move my stuff into storage and live out of a suitcase anymore (although my room is so small right now it pretty much is a suitcase). Even my hormones are leveling out. It is nice.
Maybe this is my next coming of age: reconciliation. Finding the balance between being fun and being comfortable. Maybe that's how I'll take it.
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| this was me and my girl Lisa back in the carefree days |
It's been two years, and I feel different.
Two years ago today I was probably the only person in the library on the last day of finals, racing the clock to finish my last paper for my last year of my college career. In between sections, I would have been scrolling through emails from the college career center asking, "Are you SURE you haven't found a job for after graduation yet?????!!!?!?!?" Subtext: "You're ruining our numbers and making us look bad."
My response was invariably, belligerently, that I still had no plans for after graduation. To be honest, I was almost proud and a little thrilled to be slighting "The Man," the proscribed "way of doing things," the pressure to "give back" to what I was increasingly recognizing as an institution just as flawed and convoluted as any other institution. I was not feeling very warm toward institutions at the time.
I don't think I would have believed you if you told me then what I would be doing now, two years down the line. I'm in a leadership position, at a for-profit company, doing marketing, of all things. I work in a field, like they always say, that was barely beginning to exist when I started college. I wear business casual, black and grey and brown, without patterns, for the most part. I am learning corporate jargon and business savvy. I read newsletters from LinkedIn. I get jazzed about examples of PR and marketing in the real world.
I live in Delaware, not with my parents -- but I do hang out with them for fun. I live in a city. I'm in a long-term, serious romantic relationship. I have a smartphone. I read nonfiction books for fun. I listen to NPR every day -- in fact, I am a member of my "local" (Philadelphia) public radio station. I go to church (only once a month or so, but still). I chaperone youth trips and activities, for God's sake!
I made my first green smoothie last night. (It was OK. I think I put too much banana in it.) I get excited about having 15 minutes to myself from time to time.
I wouldn't have guessed, when I was struggling to stay awake through my commencement ceremony almost two years ago, that this would be my life now. It's too much like what The Institutions told me I should be. I'm living "the dream."
And I like it, don't get me wrong. But part of me feels like I skipped right over my twenties. I skipped over the $100-a-month-stipend years in service to my society. I never lived in NYC or L.A. or the Twin Cities. My waiting tables phase was three months long. I loved it, for awhile. I have never been in a band. I don't go to concerts in coffeeshops, or hang out with starving artists (I do spend a decent amount of time with people who actually make a living doing art and writing, which is infinitely less hipster and can get depressing). I don't own a bicycle. I don't have beer for dinner on the regular. (Only on occasion.) I rarely day drink. I'm not sure I even have any beer in my fridge right now.
Last year, when I lived at home, I used to tell my mom that I hoped I would never become un-fun. I used to pray fervently that I would always be able to keep things in perspective, and never get dragged down by the humdrum and hurdles of adult life. I wanted never to take myself too seriously.
But I can already feel my mind growing inflexible in certain ways. I am resistant when the new people at work propose an idea I "know won't work." I haven't written a poem in weeks.
I made a very conscious decision not to stay in the Midwest, and I don't regret that. But part of me is jealous of my friends who all live together in Uptown, crash on each other's couches when they stop being able to pay rent, do idealistic jobs for community-focused nonprofits that can't really afford to pay them for the work they do -- but they truly are making a positive impact! They feature in each other's Instagram pictures, lit up in psychedelic pinks and purples, with up-and-coming Indie musicians onstage in the background and heavily garnished cocktails in the foreground.
I don't even like Indie music, and I still wish I was in those Instagrams.
This sounds pretty bitter. I'm not, really. I have invested a lot in my life the way it is now, and the return on that investment fulfills me beyond my expectations. I feel very lucky to have found the places and the work and the people I have found here.
So, what am I getting at, then?
I guess I'm just missing my friends, the classmates I was clinging to so literally two years ago, and the dreams we had. I'm afraid that I am becoming boring. I'm too responsible, and too scared of the world as it is uncovered before me, to be the fearless explorer I wanted to always be.
And yet, I am relieved at the relative lack of drama and crisis in my regular life. (Knock on wood!) It is nice when a lot of things stay pretty much the same for extended periods of time, and I don't have to move my stuff into storage and live out of a suitcase anymore (although my room is so small right now it pretty much is a suitcase). Even my hormones are leveling out. It is nice.
Maybe this is my next coming of age: reconciliation. Finding the balance between being fun and being comfortable. Maybe that's how I'll take it.
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