Gobble Gobble

Here it is, folks- the day before Thanksgiving. This holiday is about remembering what we're thankful for, how so many years ago, the white man came over and did all sorts of inhumane things. And food....probably mostly food.

This year, even though I am still on the job market and am living a less-than-glamourous lifestyle, I find that I still have many things to be thankful for: my supportive family, my ridiculously uplifting and loving friends, my cozy apartment in the city, and the opportunity to spend Turkey Day with a family who has taken me in as one of their own. Though I am always striving to have and achieve more in the future, I am eternally grateful for what I have at the moment, and I hope you are too.

Now go stuff your faces and I will do the same. But, please- don't stab anyone over that insanely-discounted BlueRay player or TV this coming Friday; I promise you, it will not be worth it.


                                      

I Will Survive (hey hey)

I have officially been unemployed for a week.

It's an odd thing to wake up in the morning and not have to rush anywhere. I'm starting to lose track of my days; everyday feels like Saturday. I am living in an endless weekend. I'm watching approximately 7 episodes of Sons of Anarchy per day (which, if you asked, I could talk your ear off about all of the emotional trauma I've endured by watching that show...masochist? Nooo...) while eating poptarts and couscous. I look at jobs online, eat, watch some Netflix, and sometimes nap. Here's a list of additional things I've started doing to fill my days:

1. Cleaning my apartment- like really cleaning it, even getting that crap out from behind the sofa.
2. Writing new arrangements for Miley Cyrus songs and contemplating whether they're good enough to be put up on YouTube (so far, they haven't been, but it's a great stress reliever to create something wonderfully awful.)
3. Attempting to cook.
4. Reconnecting with old friends and family members; this is probably my favorite part so far about being unemployed. Now, I actually have time to talk to my 80-something year old grandma and pick her brain about life and the lessons she's learned along the way. She doesn't always understand why I act/do the things I do, but that's more because of the years between us than anything else. She supports me, and that shouldn't be taken for granted.

It's not a picnic. Leading the charmed, unemployed life means reading endless emails of rejection after rejection. Even after a week, I can feel that it's started to take its toll. On a small scale, I love being busy. I love being productive, and I love working with people, but none of those things are really happening right now. On a much larger scale, it's like I have 5 different, perfectly fulfilling options about where my career could take me, but I have no clue about how to get to any of them. I'm hungry, and not for more poptarts. I want the life I was promised when I first started college- not an easy life, but a life where I feel like I have a chance.

And then I remember I am merely a statistic; 22 and unemployed??? Pfft, I'll let you know when I actually have something earth-shattering to talk about, America.

You Give Me the Giggles

    For some reason I thought that school girl crushes would end once I got out of school. HA. Good one, self. You will have crushes after school ends, and it's because you will start having crushes on your coworkers, or maybe even your supervisor. Instead of checking to see if he's at his locker so you can coincidentally stroll pass and call out an oh-so-casual "hey", you'll be running into him at the water cooler, or reaching for a beer at the same time at company happy hour. You will still blush when he makes eye contact with you, and you will still laugh at his stupid jokes because to you, they'll be witty and fresh. You'll chat about clients, and welcome his advice because he genuinely wants to help. You'll joke about how much your job sucks, but know in your head that he is probably the only thing that makes it worth coming to everyday. 
      You'll fall into a routine of catching the same train, and conversations will turn to subjects more stimulating than work and vacation time. You will ask about each other's weekends, and secretly wish he had texted you to meet up. You will spend half your day emailing each other little jokes, but making it look like work.You will imagine what it's like to hold him, to kiss and touch him. You will feel special when he talks about his family and shows you pictures of his nieces and nephews because you love seeing tiny little morsels of him with everyday that passes. In your head, you will go back and forth a million times about whether or not to make a move. You will kick yourself for chickening out, because this happens every time, even the times you tell yourself will be different. You will wonder if he sees you as more than a coworker/friend, or if you made it all up in your head- every smile, every compliment, every moment.

Then, you will get a new job, and the process will begin again, and if you're lucky, you will giggle and blush as if for the first time.

You & Me/Him & Her

It's exactly one year ago today that I met you.

Actually, I'm lying; I don't know who it was that met you that evening outside Wrigley Field; I haven't seen her in ages. I've been thinking about this day for so long, it seems. I've wondered what it would look like, how I would feel, would I even remember? And now that it's here, there is a sense of accomplishment. It's like the universe reminding me- hey, look at what you've done without him! Look at who you are know!

Even when I groaned at my phone the other morning, slowly connecting the dots from the night before (Point A: Shots of Fireball which led to Point B: Texting you at approximately 1:46 am stating "hey.") I wasn't mad at myself. I wasn't thinking about how pathetic I was for reaching out or how surprised I was that you replied and wanted to start a conversation. I was thinking a lot of things, but none of those.

Mostly, I was thinking about how your responses didn't belong to the wonderfully inflated version of you in my head. They belonged to someone I had no feelings for- no pain, no animosity, no longing. Someone with whom I had no connection, no chemistry, and hardly anything to say. It was like Christmas came early.

But you should know: you changed me. Noticeably, and unexpectedly, and in more ways than you'll ever comprehend. All because you built me up to my highest high, then dropped me out of the sky without a parachute in sight. And (without sarcasm) I can't thank you enough for that fall; I wouldn't be the me that  I am today without it.

Did I really go to college???

 I almost cried at work yesterday, and it wasn't because of my boss or a rude client. It was because I got a text message from my best friend stating “The car’s loaded…and I’m in tears.”
       After living together for the better part of 4 years, my best friend and I parted ways, and she left the city to move home; it’s just the latest in a long string of goodbyes I've been saying since graduating college 2 months ago.
     I suppose the weirdest thing about college is that you never really believe that it’s going to end. You see your older friends graduate and talk about post-grad life, but you never really understand what’s so peculiar about it until you’re there yourself. It’s this feeling of being left out, especially if you’re like me, with plenty of friends still in school. They’re talking about the drama, the new professor whom no one’s really sure about whether or not they should joke around with, the new policies that are being put into place…and you’re standing there, with nothing to do but listen and grumble about your job when asked about your life.
     In a lot of ways, college feels like a detailed, long-form lucid dream. I know that it happened- I’ve got the debt and degrees to prove it- but I also don’t understand how 4 years can be gone before you have a second to even stop and realize it. Maybe it doesn't feel quite real because you leave college as a vastly different version of yourself from when you started.
      It’s not that I don’t want to work- I am ecstatic about all of the possible different ways my career could go- but I just don’t feel ready. At 22 years old, you really think you should be paying me a “salary”? I have irrational moments of spontaneity that make me want to bleach my hair, get a hoard of tattoos, and move to Seattle to pursue my “budding” music career  (and by budding, I mean that my roommate, mom, and neighbors are my biggest fans). Why on God’s green earth do you think I am capable of sitting at this desk for 5 days a week? Statistically speaking, I’m more likely to just stop showing up for work because I've decided to go on a road trip with my sister and because living in the adult world when you don’t feel like an adult is f@#*ing SCARY. And people tell you it can be a little scary or weird after you graduate but WHY DIDN'T I LISTEN?
       I think I need to end this post soon or else I’ll just go into anxiety mode and start stress-cleaning my apartment. What I’m saying here is simple, really: there is nothing you can do to prepare yourself for the inescapable awkwardness of post-grad life. Friends will move away, you might move away, and you might find yourself in a job that was not your first choice. And it’s scary and odd and you wonder how you got to that point in the first place, but one day you realize and start to accept the fact that everything is temporary.