30 weird things we never would have thought to prepare for before "growing up"

This week's lunch break phone date covered a lot of really important topics, starting out about as sad-serious as you can get and ending on a much more lighthearted note. Still, though, the things we have to talk about are big. Important. Of consequence.

I want to take a moment (before I dive into topics I am actually equipped to tackle) to pay homage -- one of the sad starting topics for those Oles who read the blog. First, I must make tribute to Professor Jim Farrell, who I just learned passed away almost a month ago. This man made a huge impact on the St. Olaf community at large, and more specifically on my immediate circles, of which most members at least dabbled in environmental studies, campus ecology, the impact we make on our surroundings. To a man who knew the great extent of what that means: cheers.

You may also know that Pastor Jennifer Koenig has resigned since we left Olaf, due to illness. I must also pay tribute to her, the woman who taught so many of us how to communicate, how to smile, how to find peace. This week has brought some heartbreaking updates on her status, posted on CaringBridge. This is an uncomfortable thing to mourn at this stage, and yet we are in mourning. Please keep her and her family and the huge number of her supporters in your hearts in the coming weeks and months.

Now, I realize, this post can't be lighthearted in any universe. But I must take this, as I said, to a dimension where I can process it.

One of the amazing things about both of these people is how wide are the ripples of this news. Both of them taught my peers and me far more than could ever be encapsulated in a textbook or thesis paper. Or in two years of blogs. The things they have left us with clarified who we are and how we understand our lives, and continue to emerge to this day as we work through things like relationships and grief on the phone more than two years after our last class, our last coffee bought with FlexDollars in the Cage during senior week.

After Monday's phone conversation, which finished with a bittersweet acknowledgement of "the weird shit we have had to deal with since graduating," I read an article on BuzzFeed called "12 Things Our Parents Forgot To Teach Us."

(Since I am in the social media marketing field, I can't gloss over this prime example of native advertising: posts with some degree of actual substance, designed and paid for to promote a company or service. The topic of a future post, I'm sure... But back to the meat of the issue.)

My parents luckily at least mentioned once or twice that credit cards are not free money (number one), and that lending money to people must be done with extreme caution, if ever (number four), and they've definitely given me a crash course or 11 about how to read a paper map (number eight). But even if they did give me lessons in some of the others I still have stumbled over them once or twice. For example:

5. You never really stop feeling like a kid.
7. How to get along with your roommates.
9. How you feel after too much coffee.
10. How to deal with your first heartbreak.

And to be fair, a lot of this stuff would be pretty dang hard if not impossible to teach. I'm not sure whether the history of anthropological theory and the forced downtime and the infamous Project Without Parameters were intentional cover-ups for daily life lessons, but some of them sure served that purpose in the long run.

So, without further ado, a partial list of Weird Shit We Would Never Have Thought To Prepare For, But Kinda Wish We Would Have Known About In Advance. (Also known as, A Preview Of What Life Will Be Like From Here On Out.)

Disclaimer: Some of these are drawn from personal experience, and some of them are borrowed from undisclosed sources. You know who you are.

1. That we have food allergies, and spent all of college feeling really gross all the time and not knowing why.
2. Along similar lines, how to cook (and drink) gluten-/lactose-/meat-free...
3. Speaking of drinking, that we get more hungover, even if we drink less, higher-quality booze.
4. In other news, how to drink with bosses and coworkers without accidentally saying anything you shouldn't. Plus, what if everyone else is just hammered?
5. Also, how do you grocery shop in general?
6. What it's like really not having any money, but also not having a cafeteria that we, our parents, our grandparents, and/or our student loans already paid for.
7. How great it is to live somewhere that has laundry included.
8. How to meet our significant others' parents.
9. That we might want to move in with somebody before we marry them, and
10. How to talk to our parents about it, or
11. How to pretend like we are not living together so our parents or other important institutions don't find out about it.
12. How to work a job that didn't exist when we went to college, or even when we graduated college, or even when we got called in for the interview.
13. How to find something new to do if what we thought we wanted to do as a career turned out not to be the right thing.
14. How to leave a job properly. Is that a thing?
15. Deciding whether to sign our souls away to make monthly car payments on a new(er) car, or whether we would rather figure out how to get our old car into the shop every other month to get repairs done on it and parts replaced, and then how to get to work after that, and how to pay for it.
16. Or, whether it's worth it to live and work where you don't need a car. Really, there aren't that many options!
17. Facebook friends who get married and then change their names, and you have to look through half their pictures to figure out who they are and how you know them.
18. And then when your news feed is suddenly full of babies. Babies everywhere. Where did they all come from?! No, wait... I don't actually want to know.
19. Realizing that every conversation and relationship we have is a cross-cultural one and that you can never assume anybody is on the same page as you.
20. How to handle getting mugged, or robbed.
21. Is it ok to move away to get over somebody?
22. Or, if you move away for any reason, how do you meet new people you might like to spend time with? How do you meet anybody?
23. Also, how do you make friends in a new place if you know that you, or they, are going to be leaving after their gig is up?
24. How to get up and go to work when we really just don't feel like it.
25. How to grieve when life goes on and nobody around you knows about it.
26. How to wear black, brown, navy, taupe, or anything conservative without getting super bored.
27. That people make up responses and solutions to a lot of questions they don't know how to answer.
28. How to reconcile spiritual needs and personal faith, disillusionment with organized religion, and family expectations.
29. How to go on a cheap date without feeling cheap, or, if it is a first date, without making a big deal about it so the other person doesn't think you're high-strung.

And finally, number 30:
How to do all this stuff when your closest friends, the ones who know what you're dealing with and how you deal with things... When those people are who-knows-where, but they're definitely not up the hall, they may be in the same city if we're lucky but sometimes aren't even reachable by phone?

This is the really tough part. I have been fortunate to know that I am not alone in dealing with super weird stuff, and fortunate to be able to share it with people close to me and also with people who are really far away. (I must admit, I love Facebook and smartphones and text messaging for this reason...even though they are apparently causing the breakdown of our society.)

And I have been incredibly blessed to share it with all of you. Read on, dear friends. Live on!


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Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! Tune in on Sunday night for this week's All Good Things list, and next Wednesday for more reflections on being a "new adult."

consequences

Good Thing #4 on Sunday was J.K. Rowling's first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy. Since Sunday I have finished this book, and I have to update my recommendation.

 

I still say the book was excellent. J.K. Rowling has always had a sixth sense for details, which is largely what made the Harry Potter series so compelling, in characters, plot, and setting. In this latest book, the details did most to build characters and their relationships with each other.

She writes people so well. She writes teenagers to a T, which I think is hard to do without cheapening them as human beings and as characters, and she gets into the inner workings of adult minds and motivations as well. And, I think most brilliantly, she packages up so perfectly the complexity of everyone's emotions and motivations and the way they all tangle together to create situations, in all their awkward, dream-like glory.

All of this truth gets a little heavy and rough at times throughout the book, but right at the end, between page three-hundred-and-whatever and the end of the book, between now and Sunday, she just clobbers the readers with sad. I had heard when I first started reading that the book was depressing, and I didn't really believe it, and I still wouldn't personally call it depressing... But I must mention this disclaimer, that the book is really dramatically sad. And also that I loved it anyway. It made me think, but not too hard.

On Monday of this week I went out for dinner with my parents, and we talked about relationships. There has been a lot of relationship talk lately: how love distorts our decisions, and how our responses elicit certain responses from other people, and other things that would take days to relay to you. I will mention briefly that, on Monday night, the main agenda item was Jason moving in with me.

Now, despite the fact that I have always been fairly independent, and that I definitely am developing my own life now, and that I truly believe that my parents would accept me and love me no matter what... This is a scary conversation to have. It's also one I want to have with them, because they are pretty smart and have a lot of life experiences and, as much as I might not like to admit sometimes, they do know me extraordinarily well.

I won't go into a lot of detail, but the sum of the conversation was something along these lines: "Your actions have consequences, and you have to live with them one way or another, and we don't want anybody to get hurt."

Pretty amazing. Did I mention my parents are really smart and really cool?

Anyway, this isn't really anything new to me, since that has been, more or less, the gist of every "tough" conversation I've had with my parents ever (and a lot of the less tough ones too). Your actions have consequences. This is a fact I am all too familiar with.

Among the other things I've learned in my relatively few years: I can know things, and I can be 110% prepared, and I can have thought out the possible consequences of my every action hundreds of times (paying more attention to the details than J.K. Rowling herself)... And I can still be surprised, caught off guard, thrown for a loop, mentally and emotionally destroyed by an outcome to a situation. The degree of destruction caused by life's little curveballs has tended to decrease over time, because I learn from my mistakes and I learn how resilient I am and that I can recover from most everything that comes my way on a regular basis. (Knock on wood...)

All that being said, I can't go around letting the Fear of the Unknown keep me from doing things... So I go on. Sometimes recklessly, but mostly with a deeply-instilled awareness of what will happen if I...

A conversation with a friend after last week's post reminded me how big the decision-making topic actually is, and how relatively little of it I covered in the post. I think choosing and deciding is a particularly large and poignant topic for those of us who are just out of college, 1 year, 2 years out. And, I'm sure, it is monumental also for our parents, recent empty-nesters who are faced suddenly with a forced opportunity to rediscover themselves.

At this point our first jobs and appointments and living arrangements are running out or perhaps wearing thin, or we are suddenly presented with new jobs or positions or appointments. (Sidenote: look for a guest post soon about the year of service. The ultimate bookended post-grad arrangement.) We may be starting or finishing another round of school. Our relationships are changing. (How many of my friends are married or engaged or pregnant or now posting pictures of their babies all over the social networks -- I am too young for this, I insist!) Or we are moving in, or moving out (in with our significant others, out from our parents' houses).

And I will speak for myself and say that, to me, as I near the 2-year mark at my first "real" position, the possibilities loom with even more intimidating shadows labeled, "The Rest of Your Life." And all my decisions and their consequences bear labels and disclaimers warning me that this next thing, or, in some cases, this now thing, could be forever.

That's huge. It's like how we, as 17-year-olds, chose colleges that in many ways shaped our destinies and our identities. At 23, 24, we are trying to project who we are now onto who we want to be, and who it looks like we are turning out to be, and do they line up? Are we compatible with our dreams?

I do still believe in dreams, even though I see mine now as though through a fishtank, or in a funhouse mirror. I will answer my own question: I am 23. I have no idea. I don't know what I will be dealt in the next few months and years, and I have at best a rough sketch of the cards I will deal myself. I'm just trying to be straight-up with myself and the the people around me, and put out good into the world, and be smart without committing hubris, and believe that I will handle my choices and their consequences with grace and wisdom.

And if I mess up, I'll deal with that too.

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Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! Tune in on Sunday night for this week's All Good Things list, and next Wednesday for more reflections on being a "new adult."

when i was 24...

I’ve mentioned The Girls At Work in probably too many posts. Since we’re all around the same age, and in other obvious ways our lives overlap, our lunchtime conversations provide a lot of fodder for this blog.

Mostly we talk about our roommates, and pets. Then we talk about what we do for fun, and lifehacks for doubling up professional dress with casual wear, and working out (or not). We talk about money (mostly, how much we don’t have). We talk about food: fitting grocery shopping into our busy schedules, eating healthy, eating out.

On Monday of this week, while we slogged through all this heavy problem-solving, The Other ‘ara (we get mixed up all the time at work) told us how her skinny, blond cousins, young parents in their 30s, talk about being 24. “Our twenties were a blast,” they’ll say, “but let’s be honest-- we might be less fun now, but we’re not that much less fun. And we sure don’t miss living paycheck to paycheck, living in scary places because it’s all we could afford, going out every night...”

So I started thinking: how will we look back at these lunches and our standard fare, our weird roommates, hangovers, being perpetually on the lookout for the loves of our lives? And I thought about a comment my Gramma made, how she appreciates my blog because I actually listen to the wisdom of my elders, and incorporate it. And I remembered how much I love hearing other people’s stories instead of just writing my own all the time, and I thought I’d better ask some more experienced people to recall being our age.

This post goes out to The Girls At Work, especially Sara.

I’ve also mentioned before how my mom’s experience has been different from mine. The major reason being, she was married at 22, and had me at 25, and so the time I’m spending now getting to know myself, she spent figuring out “ourselves” -- the We-factor. Being married and being a "new adult."

“When I was 24, Papa and I did everything together. We didn’t have any money... But everything was an adventure.

“And then when I was 30, I had three kids. When I was 29, Maria was born. And when my mom was 29, I was born. So that was significant to me. It felt like things were coming full-circle.

“But I didn’t feel grown up until I was about 45. Life was still an adventure and I felt like everything was so new. Now I feel like... I heard this lady say in the store that she wished she was young again but knew everything she knows now. I like the wisdom that I’ve gained and the insight that I’ve gained over years of experience.”

And now, she’s starting to take new kinds of opportunities to get to know herself. In some ways, I feel like we are on a similar page now. It is comforting, though, to hear that she just started feeling grown up recently. Maybe that means we’ve actually got some time to figure things out!

“Figuring things out” is a theme that came up over and over again. More specifically, “I hadn’t really figured anything out back then.” I was talking to J about a friendship I’m frustrated with right now, and he recalled an old friend he couldn’t even speak to for years after a bad roommate experience in college. “I eventually figured it out,” he said, “and so will you. But it will probably take you half as long. Hopefully.”

I was pleasantly surprised to get a similarly clueless impression from one of my most influential college professors. It is strange, no matter how many times I hear it, to learn that “grown-ups” I so deeply admire as capable human beings have or have had their clueless moments. It’s comforting, too. And it often makes me respect them more.

“24. Given that it was half of my life ago, I don't recall that much about my emotional state at 24. I was living in Japan teaching English and happy to be meeting some really great people. I wasn't in a romantic relationship. I read a lot, mostly novels and stuff about Asian politics. I learned how to ski. I intended to keep moving and traveling.

“I didn't know it at the time, but I was making progress on figuring out who I was. Of course I also didn't realize that some big surprises were in store for me in that regard over the next couple of years -- the major wrong turns in my life hadn't happened yet.”

Reading this response now makes me wish I had dug deeper for “the major wrong turns”... But I guess that's a conversation for another day! This part is a little intimidating... What if we have some serious wrong turns ahead of us?!

On the plus side, I guess, we still have a shot at turning out as well as Tom did.

And maybe it just takes that long. My friend Emily, who I met while she was doing AmeriCorps in Delaware last year, is not really that much older than I am. But the way she talked about being 24 struck me almost as though she were a different person commenting on someone else a few years younger.

“So as a 32-year-old, I can't really speak for anyone else because everyone matures at different rates. At 24, I had the time of my life. I had the best group of friends and I had a sense of identity. HOWEVER, I was also extremely dramatic and immature. Every kiss was some epic romance and every hurt feeling was a betrayal. So if I knew then what I know now, it would be to be a little more pragmatic, a little more responsible, a little more sober and a lot less angsty. I thought angst was 'cool' and therefore never tried to grow out of it. I also cared way too much about appearing hip, together, and cultured. I didn't realize how fake it looked. But that's just me. I was extremely immature for that age. Like I said, everyone is different.”

So I asked, what was the catalyst that makes you look back so critically? What sparked the shift, and when did it happen? What do I have to look forward to?

“There was no ‘one’ thing that contributed to the change, but moving to California to be a couch- surfer knocked a lot of it out of my system. Just not living in a place where everyone understood me and enabled my quirky, youthful ways-- that forced me to grow up a lot and realize the difference between friends and drinking buddies, and other important lessons. Delaware was another one for similar reasons.

“But it's been a process and it's one that I am still in the midst of.”

I love that she boiled it down to realizing the difference between friends and drinking buddies. It strikes me as such a beautiful way to express something I’ve often heard about growing older -- that we learn how important relationships really are to our happiness, and, if we’re lucky, how to have functional ones. Distinguishing friends from drinking buddies seems like a pretty good first step.

So maybe we really just don’t “grow up” until we’re 45. But I wonder-- what is the catalyst? And how do we really know that we’ve done it, we’ve hit our peak, we’re grown up!

One of my dad’s best friends, Dan (my dad, also called Dan, was his best man back in 1986), both offered an answer to the “catalyst” question and threw the whole idea for a loop.

“Around the age of 24...I say ‘around’ since that was so long ago (I am 52 now)...I would soon to meet a young beautiful lady who later accepted my marriage proposal, after she said ‘maybe’ and made me wait for a few weeks! For me, finances were ok but certainly not great so there was some tension about finding/keeping the right job. I had gone back to college a few years after high school.

“In some ways, I think I thought I had things figured out fairly well but I didn't really focus on the little things. I had a job that I liked and my employer kept promoting me so I felt rather encouraged and optimistic. I do recall thinking from time to time about my parents who were in their early 50s. I wondered if I would be so stuck in a rut when I get to their age as far as career, family, doing boring church stuff, etc.”

Is this like me, now? What do I have to look forward to? Read on...

“Little did I know how much children change the picture!! Liz and I have five children. The first child was an adjustment, but the second and third not so much. I guess we already had gone through the initial adjustments/shock of a major lifestyle change with the first. We waited five years before having children, but it was all an amazing experience....

“Our fourth child was the one that really threw us for a curve. Not that he was a difficult child but more from the logistical point of having so many car seats and transporting four kids places was not easy.”

AHA! KIDS! THAT’S the catalyst!

I’m actually in a bizarre position right now where I’m watching J’s older sister and her husband with their new baby, and they seem pretty much exactly the same. That is weird. At the same time, she (the baby) is having a major, discernible impact on their lives, on their social schedule, their sleep, their role in the extended family. But if they weren’t grown up before, they’re no more so now. And if they were before, then, well, there goes that idea...

But wait, Dan’s not done:

“I can honestly say that looking back when I was 24 year old, any thoughts of what I might be doing or how life might possibly be now were nowhere close to how they have turned out!

"I have heard people comment that at my age I would be ‘settled in’ to routine and life would sort of cruise by or that I would begin to slow down after turning 50. Nothing is further from the truth! Life is busy. I still have four boys living at home. Three of them are teenagers and one 12-year-old.

“My ‘career’ is just beginning to launch off into the great unknown...and that is amazing and exciting. It's all a God thing! At age 24 I really did not know what my ‘passion in life’ was. I really didn't realize what that was until about ten years ago...in my early 40s. My passion is praying for people! That alone began a period of years of learning, failing, stumbling and grasping this.”

Things are new! There are still learning curves at 32, 48, 52! Things happen that are so unexpected and they throw us for a loop again and again, and we take wrong turns and make new discoveries...

Now, The Girls At Work and I, my classmates and my friends, are looking forward to getting our ducks in a row, getting our shit together, figuring things out. Having our own place, being married, making the salary we want and having our own benefits instead of living off our parents’. (In the meantime, Mom, Dad, Obama, we appreciate it and it really is awesome of you to share yours with us until we’re 26!)

5, 10, 25 years down the line, we will definitely have gained some perspective and some wisdom, but who knows what we will think about who we are now and what we are doing. All we can do is our best, and try to be happy.

Bring on the adventure!

society is crumbling

Last week one of my coworkers found a video on Fox News entitled "All-Male Fox Panel Laments Female Breadwinners." Somewhat shocked and horrified, we took it as our comedy for the day... But the clip stuck with me.

Let me summarize it for you, although the title is pretty self-explanatory:
The clip consists of four guys in suits talking about a new study stating that in 4 out of 10 families a woman is the primary breadwinner. Of course they find this "concerning and troubling," and spend about four minutes discussing the crumbling, the dissolution, the disintegration of American society and why it can be directly attributed to women being the primary breadwinner in less than half of American families.

"It's having an impact on our children," they say. "We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complementary relationships, and it's tearing our society apart."

"We're losing a generation. Bottom line, it could undermine our social order."

It's easy to dismiss everything they are saying as sexist and ignorant. Because it is. But there is something in this conversation that needs to be addressed.

I work for a registered minority- and female-owned company. This always casts political and social issues under a really interesting microscope. Especially political and social issues that deal with women or people of color.

When we sent the clip out to everyone in the office, the female partner said, "You know, it's unrealistic to think that we can balance having a fulfilling career, taking care of our kids, maintaining a successful marriage, keeping a clean house... I don't envy you young ladies. I don't envy your generation. You have some incredibly difficult choices to make."

The clip stuck with me, and that comment stuck with me. It's not as though this is something new to me. My female friends and I have been battling the question for most of our conscientious lives, and particularly since we graduated college: What sacrifices do I want to make to have my dream life? What sacrifices should I make to have my dream life?

Do we sacrifice our dreams or our callings for love? Or do we sacrifice love for our calling? Do I move to a new and faraway place, where I know no one, because my significant other got a good job there? Do I move to a new and faraway place, where I know no one, and leave my significant other behind because I got accepted to my dream grad school, or because I got offered my dream job?

The social environment in which I grew up taught me that I should not sacrifice my personal -- read, "professional" -- dreams for a romantic relationship. Because I will inevitably become resentful and that will take a toll on the romantic relationship I gave up everything for.

But I grew up in a family that prioritized the collective, the community, the relationships within a community, above all. Plus, that greater social environment planted this seed in my head that I can have it all. This is one of the main complaints of my peers: that we were led to believe something untrue, namely, that we can do anything; and it is one of the main complaints of older generations against our generation: that millennials have this sense of entitlement, this belief that we deserve to have everything we want. We want to have our cake and eat it too, and it turns out, suddenly, that we can't.

Damn.

So I, and a lot of other people in my peer group, feel a little confused.

there are 168 hours in a week. i need at least 250.

Many of our mothers, now that we're out of the house and figuring out our own lives, are having an opposite realization. My mom has said on multiple occasions that she made the conscious decision to do things she wasn't wild about sometimes because she would be with the people she loved. As a mother and wife she would have given up almost anything for us, and on many occasions she did.

I think that choosing a family or a relationship as #1 is a decision that is unfairly vilified for women in modern, forward-thinking society. But there is real emotional and psychological fallout for those women who do make that choice, and put love in the top spot in their lives.

And there is real emotional and psychological and social fallout for those women who make the choice to put their careers in the top spot. There is and always will be fallout, no matter what we decide to put first. Something will always fall behind.

Those Fox News guys were right when they said the rise of female breadwinners is "having an impact on our children." They were right when they said it's undermining our social order. They were right, honestly, when they said that we as "people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complementary relationships."

But it is ignorant, cowardly, to conclude that this means we should go back to "the way things were." It's ignorant, too, to say that the rise in female breadwinners caused all of this chaos. I would call it more of a symptom of an outdated model that was also flawed and that isn't really working anymore in the world as it is turning out to be.

We do need to learn how to have truly complementary relationships, where all involved parties are on equal ground. We need to figure out some way to raise our children to be functional human beings who can have functional relationships, while also making sure they don't go hungry and that they are comfortable with diversity and the change that is an inevitable part of our future.

We need a new model. I don't know what it is, and I dread the day I have to make an actual decision about my family, my relationships, my career, my lifestyle. I'm barely sustaining sanity as it is, between work, my love life, my friendships, my family, my workout schedule, and having time to eat. I know if something happened to make two of those things suddenly really conflict, it would be the hardest decision I have ever had to make. It already has been, on a smaller scale. And when my friends ask me what to do in x. y, or z situation, I have no idea what to say.

And this, I think, is the real reason "society is crumbling." The global population is getting bigger while the earth stays the same size. The amount of valuable resources really doesn't change, either -- money, time, energy. We're running out of options. The pressure on families is that much higher. The pressure on individuals is that much higher. We have to do a lot more to be seen, and our odds feel like they're always going down.

As a society we need to be creative and resilient and trash the conceptual limitations we have had for a long time. It's time for a change. Get on board, suits. You're going to get left behind. I hope.

living the dream

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!)


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.

girls: i am one.

I know I am behind the times, but I finally got around to borrowing the first season of Girls from the library this week. For some reason the show completely fell off the face of the planet, or at least my circles of the internet, after the first season, but I didn't forget!

For the uninitiated, Girls is a show on HBO created by a 20-something young woman about the lives of four 20-something young women living in New York. It made quite a splash last year when it first came out, with general sentiment recognizing the show as revolutionary, the defining piece of television of our generation, Gen Y, the infamous Millennials. At least that's what I heard.

So, I thought, I'd better watch this. I meant to blog about it a year ago, when episode 4 was the latest. I watched episode 1 and was skeptical; thought, well, maybe I just have to get into it, and watched episode 2; was still skeptical; watched the first half of episode 3 because I felt I should be able to talk about the show that was sweeping the nation and couldn't finish it. I described it as painful. I still think, having watched the whole season, it is uncomfortably oversexed, over-the-top dysfunctional, overdramatic. But I can't hate it as much as I did originally.

My friends were asking me if I'd seen it, and recommending that I watch it. "Oh, it doesn't get good until episode 4," they'd say, when I told them where I'd stopped. My boss came in one morning raving about how this show is the most brilliant exposé of the psychology and experiences of American 24-year-olds (a well-represented demographic in our office).

The one real conversation I had about the show was with T, a male friend from my freshman dorm. We took a course series together in the history of Western thought, philosophy and literature. The turning point in my opinion of the show was when he said:

I see it more as a tale of disconnect. In a society more connected than ever, a lot of people who grew up with infinite amounts of communication feel more disconnected from themselves and others than ever.

He said he appreciates that the show addresses the confusion of being a young adult, one of those who grew up being told that we could do anything, be anything; one of those who graduated into a scene of general panic at the economic and social crises facing us every time we open our eyes. One of those who followed our passions, only to suddenly realize that our passions will not pay the bills and might not even sustain us emotionally...

Or one who grew up with so many options that we don't even have passions anymore. NPR did a story last week on an Ivy League graduate in his early 20s who is looking for his life's calling -- so far in vain. He doesn't even know what he wants to do.

The fact that Max and other young college graduates can even entertain this question — "What is my passion?" — is a new conundrum, and still a luxury not everybody enjoys. Yet, Tyler recently told me, it is "a central question of our time."

The world is changing. Of course it is. There is this to consider, and the fact that each new generation does have to come up with new solutions to old problems, and solutions to problems that didn't exist before, or at least hadn't come to light.

But I'm not convinced that past generations, when the bulk of them were in their 20s, didn't face the same hot hatred from the older generations who felt their seats contested. It's just that now, we read about it every damn day on the internet.

And here's one way I don't mind being lumped in with the inane, overdramatized bullshit millennial myth perpetuated in shows like Girls or, better yet, 2 Broke Girls: we are sick of being talked about! The marketers marketing to us are missing the point. As are the churches preaching to us. And the managers writing treatises about how to manage millennials. And the executives writing angry blog posts about why you shouldn't trust a 23-year-old with your company's social media, just because (s)he grew up with the internet. And then there are the articles, like the one in the New York Times recently which I can't find but was summarized to me roughly thus: "They hate this, they hate this, they suck at this... but they're going to change the world!"

I just want to go about my business. Yeah, maybe it would be cool to change the world, at least in some small way. I can think of a few things that could use a change. Maybe I am super self-centered, like all millennials supposedly are, because I am so concerned with getting my feet under me. Maybe what I have learned about having functional relationships is minimal compared to what I will know by the time I am 50 -- just by virtue of being alive longer and having had a lot of experiences with different kinds of relationships.

Yes, I am concerned about my career, partially because I have to pay rent and stuff, and because I now have a sharpening view down the road to when I will no longer be the only person depending on that career. But I am also concerned about my career because I am obsessed with doing good work, and learning things, and achieving goals. Particularly when doing so comes with the privilege of being included in a team of really interesting, smart and capable people who have experiences already that I will never be able to have because I am me and they are them.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say, exactly. I guess it boils down to this: we are young. I think sometimes I need to be reminded of this. I am young! I have my whole life ahead of me! There is so much to do and to learn!

But really, Girls and the daily diatribes against "my generation" just doesn't really do it for me. Fancy that.

children of children: having parents with aging parents

I found out this weekend that there is a new genre in fiction: New Adult, which falls "after" YA in the literature spectrum but "before" adult fiction. To be honest, I didn't really know that YA had an official age bracket; in my mind YA meant "interesting" and adult fiction was code for "slow paced and trying too hard to be mature." (Forgive my sweeping generalizations. When it comes down to it I divide by books I like and dislike, and the genre is really a nonissue.) It turns out, though, that Young Adult fiction officially targets high school-aged teens, and it's actually required that the protagonist is between 13 and 17 years of age. New Adult fiction, though, is for young adults in the 18-21 age bracket.

I feel sort of left out by this arbitrary distinction, because I would consider myself a young adult; a new adult, if you insist; not quite a full-blown adult, not yet. Not because my responsibilities and concerns aren't full-blown adult concerns (i.e. rent, food, work, paying my bills, healthcare), but because I think there is a distinct set of issues that adults in my stage of life face. Some of these are generational, and some of them just affect twenty-somethings -- which I suppose could be an age category, but it has always sounded frivolous to me. I guess no label for my peers and I would satisfy me; we all know of my hearty distaste for limiting categories.

Besides, to be fair, even within my immediate friend group there exists a mindblowingly broad spectrum of issues we deal with on a day-to-day basis. Some of my friends are married and some are planning weddings; some of them are having babies and some of them have a kid or two already. Some of us are still on the fence about the whole dating thing to begin with. Some of us are focused on our careers, and some still funneling our energy into education, and some into service. Some of us are just trying to keep our heads above water.

Actually, that last point seems like the most widely applicable shared issue of my personal peer group. We're all just trying to figure out what it means to get by, and then how exactly to achieve that.

Note: Upon further research -- Wikipedia says new-adult fiction covers the "coming-of-age that also happens in a young person's twenties." Target market: 18-30. I'm more accepting of this category now, but still... 18 was a few years ago and I hardly even recognize it anymore.

So this is my guiding star for the blog and how I choose the baby steps I blog about: issues we face as twenty-somethings, and how we navigate them. Many of these issues are very personal, and I struggle to balance the very real considerations of privacy and particularly the privacy of others with my heartfelt belief that secretism and shame and reluctance to talk about the tough stuff is a huge driving problem in our society -- a root cause of mental illness, domestic and foreign political issues, crumbling personal relationships, institutionalized inequalities, and just general personal and societal instability. So, even though my parents and grandparents are some of my most dedicated blog followers, I try to be real on here about things I'm dealing with, whether I worry about what they might be thinking or not.

Speaking of grandparents, and age categorizations, I have been thinking a lot lately about a strange situation that I feel gets very little airtime. Having aging parents is something that people write articles and even books about. It's a gigantic gold mine for advertisers and marketers, and something a lot of people can relate to -- particularly because it's the Baby Boomers who make up The Aging these days.

But what's strange for me right now is having parents with aging parents. The combination of negotiating and navigating adulthood for myself while watching my parents and my friends' parents negotiating and navigating the aging of their parents makes for some pretty serious musing on my part.

One thing we commonly accept as difficult about thinking about old age is that it forces us to face our mortality. I know for a fact that my grandparents (and adopted grandparents, C&S) think about this pretty regularly. I know some of them are more graceful about coping with this uncomfortable truth. It's uncomfortable for our parents, too, when they still have jobs and routines and children who depend on them for food and shelter and education, to think about preparing for the inevitable end, and what happens after. And to think about this for their own parents, who may not still provide a basic livelihood for them, but who did for a good and important chunk of their lives, and who continue to be emotionally intrinsic throughout their lives. And, obviously, there is love that makes things very complicated.

So, now, our parents are having to face a series of odd decisions, like whether their parents are still capable of living on their own safely and comfortably; and if not, then where do they go? Into a "home"? Into our parents' homes? And how do we pay for all that? What about medical care? (We all know how I feel about the healthcare system in the first place; and when making medical decisions for someone else these things get even more complicated, particularly when the person you're making decisions for has always been considered perfectly capable of making those decisions for him- or herself...) And then there is the whole issue of estate, and what the house and unused furniture and other possessions should be used for, or if they should be sold; and tied up in that is what has been promised to the children, and how that will be divvied up.

And underlying all these questions and the others I have not addressed are the lifelong familial tensions and the roles everyone has always played in the family dynamic; plus the questions of personhood which is what makes most issues an issue in the first place: at what point can a person make a decision that directly affects the life of another person? At what point are we incapacitated to the point of losing a say in our own affairs? And then, who is qualified to make those decisions, and who has the final say? Especially, in this case, when there are multiple siblings. Imagine how the situation is magnified each time you add another voice and another family member, with their own worries and values, into the mix.

And what about if they are grieving, too? What if they are struggling to retain control of their own lives and their own selves and feeling it slowly slipping from their grip? They feel less sharp mentally and physically than they used to; they are forced to give up things they are passionate about and have given their lives meaning; they have already attended the funerals of siblings and friends and other contemporaries; they are waiting for dementia to set in, or insomnia, or incontinence -- for the dreaded ills and "second childhood," as we've heard it called.

So, these are the conversations happening among our parents' generation. How does this affect us?

It has been strange watching my parents and grandparents facing old age. Perhaps because of my relative lack of life experience and logistical and emotional involvement in the situation, the answers seem clear to me. I have read Tuesdays With Morrie and the Living Will and I have thought about these things; I have thought about what would happen if (knock on wood) something happened to my parents, what decisions and responsibilities I would be left with. I know my parents pretty well and I can guess what they would say to someone else faced with a similar situation. But I also understand how critical are the nuances that make this situation different from that; I understand, on a removed intellectual level, how emotionally complex these situations are. I know how fuzzy and heavy my mind feels when I am grieving -- or even just stressed.

So I am anticipating making these or similar decisions for my parents, imagining how my siblings and I will handle things, hoping fervently that the bonds I think so strongly bond us together will hold true when we are called upon to act. I'm picking out the traits my parents share with their parents, in what ways they will be similar and different... And in what ways I am similar and different from them. How I say I would handle a question they are faced with, but how that might not be how I would realistically handle it or how I will handle it when the question arises in front of me. What is my ideal model for dealing with an aging parent, and what factors will complicate that by the time it comes up for me. How can we kick the unhealthy patterns and replace them with ones that will work better? And how will I deal with the fact that, despite all my awareness and thought and premeditation, my decades of analysis can only do me so much good when it comes down to crunch time?

I know I'm being vague, but I also know that my family is not the only family looking at this situation. I know some of my friends are watching their own parents' families navigating this strange geriatric territory, and some of my friends are even thinking about navigating it themselves. I know it makes me feel old and very young at the same time, but the important thing is that it makes me think about the big picture of my own life and my life in community and the other lives in my communities. This is something, I believe, that makes us human and it's important that we not brush over it or try to avoid it. I'm taking notes. We'll see if they come in handy when my time comes.

resolute

I've spent some significant mental time debating myself today: To go home and nap, or stop at the library and write a long-due blog post? That is the question.

As if in answer, a friend posted on my wall that she noticed my long absence from blogging (Blogger has not seen me yet in 2013, I regret to say). No rest for the weary. (Kidding...)

It's not like there hasn't been anything to write about. New Year's Eve itself was a storied success--if you can get over the fact that our TV antenna reception cut out twenty seconds before the ball dropped and so, when the clock struck 2013, we watched it happen on a black screen, heard the big bangs from the neighborhood behind our house (presumably fireworks), toasted our extra-large mugs of champagne in the most disorganized manner.

And since then I've had one weekend to myself, which avoided turning into a party solely by virtue of bad weather combined with my brother's new job (congrats, bro). But that only saved Friday night. Other than that, I've been to Baltimore and Brooklyn, and am this week preparing to be a small group leader for a high school retreat in Ocean City, Maryland.

Off the top of my head, I can name 14 new people I've met since the ball dropped. My evenings are packed with social and personal commitments. This time last year, I was aching for interpersonal, extrafamilial encounters. Here's the closest I got to sharing my resolutions at the start of 2012:

I'm excited to get to know the people I shared the opening moments of the new year with, and I'm excited to get to know new people as well.  I'm excited to learn more things and read more books and taste more beers.  I'm excited to visit people and host visitors, the first planned guest of the new year being Anna Linn a few weekends from now!  I'm excited to stay in touch with far-flung friends and watch all my classmates find new opportunities and passions and whatever else we find this year.  Hopefully all good things!  I'm excited to listen to new music, watch new movies, to write new poetry and maybe even a novel, this year, and, of course, more blog entries.

Check that. Not only have I met a lot of people, including some who are quickly becoming dear friends, but I've read new books and tasted new beers--too many to count. I've traveled and hosted, I've stayed in (surprisingly good) touch, I've gone to the wedding of a good friend. I've fallen in love with new music, seen new movies, written some new poetry, and... OK, no novel--yet. And on top of all that, I have been blessed with hundreds, nay, thousands of priceless moments I never could have foreseen or even wished for.

This year, my top resolution is to carve out more free time, take more me-time. In Brooklyn, Borough of Hotties, over the weekend with Karin I read in a book about "artist dates"--basically, weekly appointments with myself nurturing my creative stimuli and impulses. I am excited about this.

When I've been asked so far this year if I have any resolutions, the only thing I have come up with is this: I want to learn to fight. I have never been a violent person, or wished to be; but I think living in the city, and just generally facing the real, driving sexism and racism and ageism and pervasive pain in the world, is making me seek sources of power. Not to wield over others, but to hoard for myself. A coworker-friend who lives in Philly has lately taken to saying, "I am prepared at all times to be attacked." I don't think this is an unusual thing for a young woman in our circumstances to think. We hear about violence against our peers far too often.

Yesterday, contrary to my aching for a free moment, I tried out BodyCombat at the Y. From the website, sticking with this class "tones & shapes; increases strength & endurance; builds self-confidence." Pretty much exactly what I am going for. I will say that I was not in the least disappointed. It was one of the most empowering things I have done in some time, and one of the most intense and satisfying workouts I have ever had. I am expecting to be sore for a short while now.

I'm also hoping this will add depth to my "training" for the Spartan Race I'm doing with a few friends in July. Just looking at the website makes me feel hardcore--or makes me feel like I will have to get a lot more hardcore over the next 6 months. But it is less intimidating than it is a challenge, and we all know how I love (need) challenges.

This year I want to write more, and get involved more with other writers. This means going to more Second Saturday Poets events, and actually staying connected with the people I meet there. It means dragging my roommate (a closet writer, as it turns out) to these writing events with me. I also had beers with a fellow Wilmington-based Ole (!!) last night, who loves and misses writing it sounds like as much as I do. How I would love to grow a really young crowd of writers here!

Speaking of, I never want to stop meeting new people and doing new things. I want to get more comfortable talking to people, starting mutually enriching conversations. I want to stop being so terrified of small talk, but then to take that small talk to the next level. Not necessarily to big talk, at least not right away, but I want to talk the kind of talk that boosts everyone involved for the rest of the day.

I want to be more patient, and more accepting of the wrenches thrown in my carefully crafted plans. I want to become less dependent on such carefully crafted plans, and be able to throw more caution to the wind, leave room for spontaneity.

I want--and this is really my biggest resolution--to recapture wonderment, awe, rapture. And, in turn, devastation. Skepticism. Wrath.

The past two or three months have been full of depression-talk. Talk about feeling depressed, talk about being scared of getting depressed, talk about the neurology and psychology of depression. Beacons blinking feebly into a seemingly very dark and empty sea, smoke signals and mirror morse code flashing back in an unconvincing display that the sea is less dark and empty than it seems.

The surface of that sea began to crack first in a phone conversation with my friend Liz out in Portland, a month or so ago. Roughly quoted, "I think in college we were constantly enraptured, consumed by wonderment. Things devastated us. And now that we are out, there is not so much enrapturement and so it feels like depression. The highs aren't quite as high, and the norm just feels like a droning low."

So it is. An informal survey about our post-grad circumstances has revealed that the intense intellectual, social, spiritual and emotional stimuli of our college years sets us up for a big fall into the routine of adulthood. And this routine, unlike routines of the past, is self-inflicted and seemingly unending. There is no diploma waiting for me anywhere down the road; there are no final exams and there is no specified expiration date. The discoveries we now must make, quickly and suddenly, are discoveries about survival, discoveries of grave significance. And these discoveries juxtaposed with the constant fast enlightenment of the liberal arts education, the designated creative spaces, the Pietri dish of like-minded meaning-seekers... We must be destined for disappointment. We are lost and lonely.

And so, my goal for 2013 is to be devastated, the way I was upon entering a Brooklyn bar on Saturday night to find myself surrounded by incredibly attractive people. My goal is to be starstruck by the beauty of sunrises and sunsets. This year I will be delighted, heartbroken, enraptured, disproportionate to my experience. This year I will feel.

I am resolute. These are my resolutions. What does 2013 hold for you?

things i want to do in life.

1. Set aside time every week to write letters. I am a Snail Mail Responder of epically snail-like proportions. Yesterday's mail yielded not one, but TWO letters addressed to me, both from Twin-Cities-based friends named Timothy (or some variation). One of the Timothys, typically a quick responder, apologized for leaving two months in between letters due to moving and other major life transitions. I felt a bit guilty about this seeing as 2 months is a pretty standard response time for yours truly. Plus getting letters is so great, every time I get one I am inspired to write letters and send them to all the corners of the globe. This epistolic inspiration leaked into the ambition centers of my brain and set it to churning out the following list of oft-repressed life ambitions.
2. Be a writing tutor. Why isn't there a writing center in this city?! If I could coach essay writers every Saturday I would be a happy woman.
3. Be the real-life equivalent of a CEL peer advisor. That is, I have a constant nagging urge to critique resumes and cover letters, to coach job search processes, share interviewing tips, give career advice, and administer personality tests like the Myers-Briggs. That being said, I have no real desire to actually work for the CEL. #CELyourself? Puh-lease.
4. Become a communication and team management coach. Probably a prerequisite of this is getting some serious communication and team management experience. I'm sure many CEOs and team leaders are dying to be bossed around by a 22-year-old lib arts grad with a nose ring.
5. Spend more time at the library. Like, go to book clubs and (nonexistent) writing groups and write a blog post on the library computers once a week and do research and tutor people in reading, writing, or English... Or just curl up in a chair and read something easy every now and then.
6. Find a grown-up poetry open mic, and get up the guts (and the memory) to perform.
7. Bring my exercise ball to work. I got a (blue) exercise ball for my birthday, and back in December I asked my bosses if I could replace my office chair with it as long as we didn't have any visitors in the office. They reluctantly agreed, if I could find a black one, and the issue kind of went to rest -- except for them making fun of me for trying to make our firm into a mini Delawarean Google/Facebook, wearing a nose ring, and eating organic unprocessed foods. But I did actually find a black ball, and just haven't got up the guts to bring up the issue again. My body cries about sitting in a desk chair 40 hours a week.
8. Spend time outside every day. Even if it's just 15 minutes. Vitamin D, baby.
9. Save more each pay period. (Translation: Be more frugal about entertaining myself and my people.)
10. Know how much moolah I have in my bank account at any given moment. I am infamously bad at this. One time (in college) I tried to buy a Subway sandwich on my debit card and it was declined. Punch line: When I went home and checked my checking account balance, I had just over $2.00 in there. #winning...
11. Go swimming once a week. I LOVE swimming. And it's SO good for the bod. And I used to do it every week, without fail. So why don't I do it more? I have to fight the community swim team and the little kids in water wings for a lane at the Y.
12. Get wild roses...and not kill them. This is pretty much futile since I have probably killed most plants I come into contact with, but they really make my heart beat faster. If I had them in my place of residence it would be impossible not to be content at any given time.

13. Dress up like a pirate for the Wilmington Pirate Festival this weekend. I haven't played dress up maybe in over a year. Have you seen my childhood?
14. Visit the Dogfish Head brewery and the brewpub in Rehoboth. It feels blasphemous to live in Delaware, be a craft brew afficionado, and not have been to Dogfish Head. Especially since I wear their earrings, but even though I dislike IPA, which is pretty much the specialty.
15. That being said, Get noticed for my Dogfish Head earrings when I go to the brewery. Fortune and fame, baby.
16. Get up from my desk a few times per day. I've been getting kinks in my hips, quads, obliques... Too much sitting. Too much switching between the gas and the brake pedals every day of my life.
17. Learn how to do basic maintenance on my own car. When I was little, I dreamed of growing up to be the woman who could fix the VCR by herself, without resorting to the help of a man. (Can that still be an allegory...?)
18. Watch Back to the Future. Yeah. Somehow haven't seen it yet. Happy (Faux) Future Day, by the way.
19. Write my own rap, instead of bumming of Luda's rhymes for the rest of my life.
20. Finish my girl talk research. Like...write the book about it.
21. Publish a book. Maybe girl talk. Maybe a novel. Maybe a children's book. Maybe poetry. Maybe a collection of essays. Who knows.
22. Get over my serious apiphobia. Fear of bees and wasps. 'Nuff said.
23. Visit the Pacific Northwest in October. Full itinerary over there, man. Wow. Portland, Seattle, Vancouver... Friends of all stripes.
24. Go to ALL the weddings. Already dropped the ball on this one. #KansasCity
25. Live in a small town or at least a city with public transit.
26. DO something about public health, instead of just writing angry blog posts/crying about it.
27. Visit the ocean at least once a year.
28. Be part of an active community. Again. Like St. Olaf, but...not.
29. Never stop learning new things and meeting new people.

milestones

It occurred to me today that 2012 is a monumental year in a lot of ways. As we are all too aware, it is the last year ever (although National Geographic reports that we may have misinterpreted the Mayan calendar...go figure). And if the world fails to end in December, 2012 will be my first year filing an independent tax return. (Death and taxes both certain, but mutually exclusive? There's a brain-bender for you...)

But no, what really sparked this epiphany was my Facebook post in honor of my middle sister's 18th birthday this morning. I remembered recently posting for Asha's sweet 16, and realized that I have long launched the countdown to my brother's 21st (assuming the apocalypse slips by unnoticed). Maria will also be graduating in less than two weeks, and in a mere 4 days I will be four molars shy of wise, and no doubt in a considerable amount of pain. So among us, we mark a lot of rites of passage this year.

Speaking of rites of passage, it is OFFICIALLY Graduation Season! While I don't remember anything our speaker said at graduation last year, or even who our speaker was, I love watching commencement addresses by illustrious, intelligent folk at other colleges and universities thanks to youtube. And because I have an awesome job, I got to spend some time today watching commencement addresses and ferreting out nuggets of wisdom from them.

Without even neglecting my day's work.

I would like to share a few of the best I found today, in case you have a few hours to spare, or you have a few hours that would otherwise be spent languishing in an ambient lack of inspiration. I will leave my mined nuggets--inspirational ore, as it were--off the table so you can enter the fray tabula rasa. (Not sure I used that right, but it's so beautiful and you get the picture.) If you don't have hours, or would rather your time outside (no judgment, trust me) then watch the last 5 minutes or so of the first two. My keen research skills tell me that a lot of chill-inducing advice gets relegated to the last few minutes of speeches, and these top two are just great.

1. Neil Gaiman at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, and a really great roundup of this address by the Christian Science Monitor. For ye readers fighting the Economic Forces Against the Arts (EFAA), this might give you a little shot of hope. Also he's just dry and hilarious.
2. Aaron Sorkins at Syracuse University. What I like about this one is that he talks about struggles. It's a little dark at times, like when he talks about his cocaine addiction at around 9:43 or one of his roommates who later died of AIDS somewhere in the 10:00-11:00 minute range. But he pulls it up for the end.
3. Am I about to share something from Sports Illustrated? Yeah. I am. It's a Monday Morning QB of highlights from commencement addresses across the country. Definitely a few gems, even though Peter King, who compiled the list, offers the disclaimer that he pretty much just writes about football. Which I neither understand, nor care about.
4. An awesome blog post by my friend and St. Olaf classmate Liz Lampman, about where she is (meta)physically almost a year after graduation. Framed like a commencement address. I majorly dig this post.
5. Aaaaand back to the root: the speech I hoped would make me senior speaker, but instead became the first post of this blog, back on May 29, 2011. In retrospect, it's probably better that I didn't have to deliver this at graduation, because I was falling asleep through most of the ceremony. I really didn't think I would make it. I feel mildly sheepish admitting that fact, but I wouldn't reorganize my priorities at that time for the world. My speech was about celebration.

If you're still reading, or if you scrolled down in hopes of unearthing some profound wordbombs, I would like to leave you with a video I think is hilariously fitting to my (and my general peer group's) current stage of passage. Not sure being 22-24 can technically be considered a rite, but it's relevant. So enjoy. And please share your favorite commencement clips. I need them for work.

P.S. While I was finishing putting this post together, Maria walked in and asked for advice writing graduation advice for her creative writing class, a la Sunscreen (1998). Apt.

guest post: getting off the couch

I think inspiration is circular.  Scratch that, I know it is.  I have certain friends who habitually respond to my posts in ways that completely floor me.  For example, today I got this message on Facebook: "I just read your blog in ITALY!"  Awesome.  I want to highlight every person I know, because you all are incredible.  That particular person has a several-month-long gig playing cello on a Mediterranean cruise!  I also have friends in France, New York City, Portland, San Francisco, India, D.C., and pretty much anywhere else, who wrestle with the same exact issues I wrestle with here in the State-That-Was-Never-Really-Supposed-To-Be-A-State.

One person I have a really involved, ongoing, and absolutely invaluable dialogue with is my friend Andy, who is conquering the world from Seattle, Washington.  He contacted me out of the blue back in October with a pretty freaked-out text message asking for advice about moving to a new, unfamiliar place, a place that offered him his dream job, a place located several thousand miles from home.

Ever since then I have found myself wondering, regularly, why he asked me for advice.  Because everything I can think of to say, he seems to have already taken to the next level.  I admire his gumption and apparent fearlessness.  Every day there is a new adventure.

I have been meaning to share this exhilarating email he sent me, and subsequently blogged on his own site, for weeks now, but I only just remembered after a fantastically adventurous weekend here in the mid-Atlantic.  Granted, my adventure (a hike at White Clay Park on Saturday, and Sunday spent cheering J and his twin brother in Philly's Broad Street 10-miler) doesn't quite measure up to Andy's thrillers, but the point here is that we inspire each other.

Here's the moment of truth: What is your Reaction?

Reaction: a study in touch

This post is my reaction to "a study in touch" by Clara on secondsetofbabysteps.  Check it out, take the message, run with it, maybe naked.  Anyway, this is part of an email I sent to my friend Clara after her post reminded me that there's stuff going on right outside the door, maybe in your own back yard, maybe just a 2 hour drive away.

Clara,

Love the post about touch, it really played into what is going on in my life lately and I dig it.

I've been trying to soak up life like it's water and I'm a sponge, but the sponge needs to get off the couch to find the water (funny thing is, it's as easy as getting off the couch!).  After I went snowboarding in Canada, I realized how easy it was to check things off my bucket list ... My life got 5 times more interesting the other day when I bought an avalanche shovel.......

So the story goes:

After an inebriated weekend at the TELUS Ski and Snowboard festival in Whistler, British Columbia, it was an intensely unproductive week at work.  This week was interrupted by meeting during (and after) work with my peers to work on a proposal that was due Friday ... we were all stressed out wearing suits and everyone was wishing us luck when we left to make the presentation.  Our boss showed up in the audience for support and the judges really liked our entry proposal.  Not being able to concentrate after that, we went to check out happy hour at a new pizza place that two of my friends from work found.  Dollar beers and $5 pizzas, clutch.  While relaxing, I brought up an idea that I had tossed to them the week before. 

     Me: "We really should grab our boards and hike up Rainier, find the snow and make a little kicker."

     Mike: "What are we doing tomorrow?"

And then that not-awkward-but-epic silence when we look at each other and realize that this shit is going down tomorrow.

We broke and headed to REI to get an avalanche shovel.  Walking out with that thing is like putting on a parachute at an airport, anyone who sees you is going to know that you plan to do something intense.

The next morning when we needed to decide who would drive, it happened that Garri was taking the windows and roof off his jeep wrangler.  If he didn't want to drive, that was the kiss of death because honestly, top down for a 2 hour drive to the highest peak in the (contiguous) United States?  I think so.  

You had mentioned that you try to remove the barriers between your senses and the world.  This is a great thing indeed, so I tried to take off my sunglasses as often as I could.  We eventually were down to t-shirts and no gloves.  The result is an incredible sunburn.  I never though I would see 75 degrees with snow under my feet, but there I was, exhausted and working my way about a mile or so up the mountain with my board and all my gear.  We stopped a few times and scoped out a place to build our jump off a natural ridge.  We took less than a dozen runs.  They mean so much more when there is no chairlift, plus, it's exhausting.  I thought about you and what you said when I was up there, you'd be a good guide, maybe not for hiking Mt. Rainier specifically, but a guide through life for sure.  Not because you're old and wise, way better; you're the best of us at groping in the dark (she is, read her blog).

After a hot and sweaty ride down one of the longest runs I've done, we jumped in the Jeep and enjoyed the sunshine and the wind beating against our ears with our arms outstretched.  High-fives were had by all.

Cheers,

Andy

Video games might not desensitize us because of high-fidelity murder and explosions, but it might be because we are inside on the couch when we play.  Take our advice and go for a hike.  Send pictures.

Cheers,
Andy

10 things i may or may not know about post-grad life

Yesterday afternoon I sat down to write a post that I've been planning for at least a week, but haven't written because current events got in the way.  Also, it's one of those posts that could easily get out of hand, given my propensity to wax poetic/philosophical/wordy.  It was inspired by an article by Lorra M. Brown on PR Daily: 10 things you should expect in your first PR job, which has more to do with life in general than with PR, I think.  I love/hate the idea of that: what you should expect.  Because really, we all know that things are going to happen as they happen whether we expected them to or not.  Hindsight is 20/20, right?

I won't go into the complexities of that axiom, but here's what I could have expected, in terms of Brown's 10 categories of things to expect out of adult life.

1. Fatigue. Really, who expects life not to be exhausting?  You WILL be exhausted "after the commute, work, lunch at your desk, and more work."  (And you might be surprised at how tiring a commute can be.)  You will be exhausted after going to church, hanging out with your sisters for a few hours, sitting down to write a blog post when your phone rings and you spend the next hour talking to a really important friend you haven't spoken to since June, and never actually getting around to blogging before you have to leave for dinner with a bunch of other adults that you don't know but feel like you have to make a really, really good impression on.  You will be exhausted for a good portion of your life.  This is not different from college.  The key is to get fatigued by events and activities that you want to fill your life, because they energize you at least long enough to get everything done, and to enjoy yourself while you do it.

2. Stress. PR Daily's article says the stress of an adult career far overshadows the stress of final exams and schoolwork, but I disagree.  Yes, I still feel stress from deadlines and conflicting demands on my time and energy--but get this: no homework to finish on Sunday nights!  The luxury of compartmentalizing work tasks from life tasks!  (Assuming I don't dream about work, which happens far too often...)  I will say, though, that it is absolutely crucial to work out a solid work-life balance.  Part of that, as Brown aptly suggests, is pinpointing coping mechanisms that will "help you avoid a first-year meltdown."  So far I have managed to avoid a meltdown by working out, setting up social activities that I can look forward to (both in the immediate and far-off future), lunch break phone dates with long distance friends (or Sunday afternoon blog break phone dates), and blowing off steam with my really awesome sisters.

3. Unsupportive friends. According to Brown, "going out for cocktails on a Tuesday night is not in your reality."  Truth be told, I go out for cocktails on way more Tuesday nights now than I ever did in college.  So suck it.  Or, more graciously, loosen up and join me.  Just one drink, maybe a plate of nachos, and some good stress-busting camaraderie.

More importantly, though, I'm upset that people have unsupportive friends (I find all of mine very supportive, thanks guys) to the point of having to "let go of friends who don't support your drive to succeed during your transition to the professional world."  Yeah, we can't hold onto everybody forever; but I for one continue to hold on stubbornly to people I love who find themselves at different points in their lives than I am.  Friendships take work, and we need each other to help navigate this strange life.  On top of that, working through rough patches in those relationships and the process of negotiating the interplay between our independent and interdependent selves help us develop crucial life skills like resilience, self-discipline, and the ability to survive and thrive in human society.

Not that I'm trying to force it if it's not working.  But I'm not trying to put my personal success ahead of relationships that are important to me.  That is where our communities and societies splinter and crumble.

4. Money. I've been promising a post on post-grad financial life for months now.  The article basically says, "Don't worry, you will be able to make it rain within a few years if you grind your nose off on the grindstone."  Not that I have any problems with the grindstone.  I'm just not that into the Sphinx look, if we're being honest.

Anyway, the elusive "money" issue, as far as I'm concerned, is secondary to #5 below.

5. Budget. Once you factor in student loan payments, rent, eating out 24 times a week (hyperbolic representation of my Wilmo A-list lifestyle), and smartphone data plans, you don't actually have very much money.  Most of my friends right now are [a little] tight on cash.  College doesn't teach you how to budget, which is unfortunate because like I said, budgeting is key.  So the "disposable income" thing seems pretty unrealistic.  More realistic would be a diet like opportunitarianism, for example.

6. Accountability. In my ideal world, this would be old news.  Hold yourself accountable, find someone else to hold you accountable, keep your new year's resolutions, you know the drill.  I would add integrity to this heading.  Brown, though, uses accountability to talk about keeping track of your time, your work, and the value of both of these things.  While I wouldn't really use the word "accountability" to talk about reporting habits and timesheets, I can't deny that learning to value my own work and justify it to my superiors has been a crucial lesson in my post-grad working life so far.

7. Digital skills. I know, I know, social networks are supposed to be social.  But really, that's not all there is to it.  I know--or at least, I hope--I'm not saying anything you don't already know: People that might hire you will probably check out your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, whatever.  And they will probably Google you.  So be real, but be aware.  Be kind and interesting and be smart about it.  Also, nobody really understands social media even though 3977344257 people around the world get paid to spend their entire lives writing social media strategy and theory.  Pay attention and you're already a few steps ahead.

8. Multitasking. I've already mentioned that I am now officially a double-monitor, 7-window, 13-browser-tab profesh (professional).  This is not generally conducive to getting things done, especially if I'm already struggling to focus.  I make micro-level checklists of my tasks for the day/week, roughly prioritized.  It kind of helps.

9. Criticism. Here's the thing.  People mess up.  Especially when you are a noob like we are, you don't know how things are done around here.  You weren't born knowing how to walk in high heels.  Heck, you weren't even born knowing how to walk.  So, take baby steps.  (I know, I'm biased toward that method.  But if you're trippin', it doesn't hurt to try.)

OK, enough with the touchy-feely stuff.  The point is, you're going to screw up at least once, and somebody's probably going to get mad at you, at least once.  People who ask you to complete some kind of task don't always know what they are asking for.  In fact, if they asked you to do it chances are they don't know what they want.  Just do your best, and learn from your mistakes.  Refine your work, hone in on the characteristics of success, whatever that means.  Show "professional development," and trust that you have the basic qualities you need to get the job done right, however long it takes.

10. Validation. Brown says you shouldn't expect to hear any praise.  I find this both untrue and in a lot of ways unconstructive.  I am fully aware, for the record, that I have been spoiled blind by praise.  We can get into a parenting theory discussion later (no rush, though, seriously) but I do think that the praise I received pretty much constantly from my parents and teachers growing up has given me the confidence to do a lot of the things I am proud of today.  I am also lucky enough to be working in a firm whose leaders give a lot of constructive feedback and encourage the same positive attitude in our constant teamwork, and again I attribute a lot of my really productive job-related confidence to this philosophy-in-action.

I'm not buffing my fingernails on my good fortune here, because not everyone was brought up that way.  Instead, I try now to deploy a healthy combination of #9 and #10 (i.e. constructive criticism, infused with a healthy dose of "what you did right" and "what could use work") toward other people, especially those who need a little boost to reach their personal goals.  I've seen it make a world of difference.

***

"The first year out of college can be tough," Brown writes.  Hear, hear.  "But your ability to navigate the challenges of your professional launch will set you on a positive course for a meaningful and rewarding career."

Ahem.  Yes, the first year out of college is undoubtedly tough.  The first year anywhere is tough.  Maybe it's just my eternal tendency to try and take on the universe in a single masterpiece, but I propose a more holistic approach to post-grad life.  I propose we take this time to construct lifestyles for ourselves, to eke out what is most important to us and seek to embody those things every day.  My wish for all my peers is that we do not lose steam and do not lose hope; that we can keep our momentum and hold onto the invaluable collection of experiences, tools and traits that make us who we are and that allow us to contribute uniquely to our communities.

Now.  Brush away those tears while I point you toward a few online examples of post-grads navigating the strange territory of the "real world" (what a dumb buzzword, by the way, used by college admissions departments nationwide).  My peers are really creative, intelligent, thoughtful human beings and I respect them a lot for sharing all that with the world.

• From St. Olaf to Saint-Brieuc: My St. Olaf classmate and good friend Stephen is now teaching English in a small provincial town in France (yes, we all think it's exactly like Beauty and the Beast).  As it turns out, though, he struggles with a lot of the same dilemmas in France as his stateside classmates do.  (He also goes on delicious pan-European vacations and takes gorgeous photos of them--reason alone to follow his blog!)
• Gator Don't Play No Shit: Written by a guy I went to school with from 4th grade 'til high school graduation, and his friends.  Their tagline reads, "Hard-hitting commentary from a couple of post-grad dudes."  I'm not going to characterize Gator as a "processing" blog like mine and Stephen's, but it definitely does document a "holistic approach to post-grad life."  And a really amusing one, at that.
• slubs in the city: More St. Olaf classmates, living together in the Twin Cities.  This is a total lifestyle blog.  They post awesome recipes, realizations about life that surfaced through a job experience, things they're excited about, and things they're not so excited about.  Super down-to-earth.
• the nebulous ponderings of a wandering lover: My good friend Liz took off to Portland, OR, after graduating from St. Olaf in May, without a plan or any real trajectory at all.  This is most definitely a processing blog, and while she doesn't post often, her posts do lay out some tough stuff for readers to slog through with her.  She's smart, thoughtful, and self-aware--good fodder for some serious pondering.
• lindsayinrussiaround2: Another classmate teaching internationally, in Russia this time.  She wouldn't likely write a post like this one ("things I've learned about life" blah blah blah) but she does talk about the ups and downs of her independent life.  Also, she has a wonderfully dry sense of humor.

So, creative, intelligent, thoughtful peers (and mentors) of mine, anything to add?