So I have figured it out. I am living in a state of permanent limbo. Mentally and emotionally, I am still a child. Indecisive, poor, non-committal, and easily bored. These are not the main characteristics of a 25 year old--at least I did not attribute these characteristics to someone in their mid-twenties. But of course, that was when I was not in my mid-twenties.
My boyfriend and I had a big fight about a month ago. During our reconciliatory talk in which he begged for my forgiveness he said he realized he didn't make the "switch" he needed to be a gold star boyfriend (the gold star is, of course, my addition and I have since made a gold star system to monitor his behavior). I was too angry to sympathize with him at the time, but I can divulge here that I am having trouble making a switch of my own. Not in the girlfriend department of course, but in the grown-up department.
Only seven years ago, 25 year-olds were adults. In my mind, there was a great divide between myself and the 25 year-olds I knew. They had jobs instead of mid-terms, steady boyfriends instead of random hook-ups, framed paintings instead of recycled drinking posters, and furniture that their colleges didn't provide for them. They were grown ups.
Well, I am 25 now and I can say that it is all one big farce. All of you who are seven years older than me are liars! Yes, when I was 18 your framed Monet prints implicitly whispered I am what you are working towards and I'm worth it. Now those wall hangings are saying: I am the ugly print your mother bought eight years ago at a garage sale and I feel sorry for you that you couldn't afford anything better.
So, I have learned that 25 years of living does not a grown up make. I still buy lunch specials and try to make them last for two meals (eat your heart out you stupid New York Times article about "poor" 20 somethings in New York). I still have no clue what I want to do with my life. And I still don't own more than $1,500 worth of personal property, Monet print not included.
I can’t help but feel inadequate because of my inability to make “the switch.” This inadequacy is exacerbated by visits home. The last time I went home and told my extended family about my graduate school success, my Auntie Popol frowned at me and said, "This is not where I thought you would be at this age. You should own something, like a house." I figured I wouldn’t tell her that the commitment to buying a mattress gave me acid reflux for a week. But really, a house? And what the hell does “this age” mean anyway?
The problem is that everyone else seems to know what being 25 means but me.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Switch
Monday, May 26, 2008
The comradery of Salman Rushdie
I remember quite distinctly a time when Ravina and I read alternate chapters of the Salman Rushdie's neverending saga "Shame." We were freshmen in college and seemingly brand new friends. It was for an English Literature course with the ominous sounding, pointy browed and totally unapproachable Professor Guarav Majumdar. His unapproachability was not at all a result of his being intimidating, but more so by the fact that he was intimated by almost any human contact that we avoided approaching him.
I tell this story fondly to almost anyone who will listen. I can almost imagine myself gleaning some lesson-to-be learned from it for my kids (really, the lesson is, if you can find a friend to share reading books with, go for it). Of course, I wouldn't say that to my children, maybe someone else's kids if I want them to be failed intellectuals. But I digress.
I am scared these days. Scared and overwhelmed by the notion that my life with be filled with anecdotes from age 18-21. I am scared that like those assholes whose lives peaked in high school, my life peaked in college. I have been mourning the loss of a good anecdote lately. I think it is safe to say that the daily grind of entry-level work does not lend itself to the feelings of comradery that keep these stories so close to my heart. Sure, there is always that special friend who does really cool things like travels around the world and they might have a good anecdote, but I resent that person anyway.
There is a certain loneliness associated with our 20s that has really come as quite a surprise. In light of boyfriends and even best friends close by, I am living a life of caveats. Yes, you can get into a great graduate school, but you have to leave the life you worked so hard to start liking.
Yes, working is great since you replace homework with happy hour, but you still have to go there everyday and look moderately normal (unless, you worked in homeless shelters like I did and in that case the rule is DRESS DOWN!). Yes, you can have a boyfriend, but you will spend all of your 20s following each other all over the world and then resent each other for it.
There seems to be an inherent isolation brought upon by a looming separation on the horizon--keeping even the best of friends isolated from each other. Case in point, I had no idea Ravina hated her 20s this much until she started this blog. All of a sudden, we are adults, expected to make decisions we previously relegated to our parents. We are buying used mattresses and IKEA furniture to dillude ourselves that we aren't really as sedentary as we really are. The problem is that if I long to stay in the cocoon of my college comradery, then this whole decade seems to be against my natural will. The caveat is that it goes on nevertheless.
I tell this story fondly to almost anyone who will listen. I can almost imagine myself gleaning some lesson-to-be learned from it for my kids (really, the lesson is, if you can find a friend to share reading books with, go for it). Of course, I wouldn't say that to my children, maybe someone else's kids if I want them to be failed intellectuals. But I digress.
I am scared these days. Scared and overwhelmed by the notion that my life with be filled with anecdotes from age 18-21. I am scared that like those assholes whose lives peaked in high school, my life peaked in college. I have been mourning the loss of a good anecdote lately. I think it is safe to say that the daily grind of entry-level work does not lend itself to the feelings of comradery that keep these stories so close to my heart. Sure, there is always that special friend who does really cool things like travels around the world and they might have a good anecdote, but I resent that person anyway.
There is a certain loneliness associated with our 20s that has really come as quite a surprise. In light of boyfriends and even best friends close by, I am living a life of caveats. Yes, you can get into a great graduate school, but you have to leave the life you worked so hard to start liking.
Yes, working is great since you replace homework with happy hour, but you still have to go there everyday and look moderately normal (unless, you worked in homeless shelters like I did and in that case the rule is DRESS DOWN!). Yes, you can have a boyfriend, but you will spend all of your 20s following each other all over the world and then resent each other for it.
There seems to be an inherent isolation brought upon by a looming separation on the horizon--keeping even the best of friends isolated from each other. Case in point, I had no idea Ravina hated her 20s this much until she started this blog. All of a sudden, we are adults, expected to make decisions we previously relegated to our parents. We are buying used mattresses and IKEA furniture to dillude ourselves that we aren't really as sedentary as we really are. The problem is that if I long to stay in the cocoon of my college comradery, then this whole decade seems to be against my natural will. The caveat is that it goes on nevertheless.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The Ten Year Plan
Two years ago, I had to take a seminar on time management to maintain my Arkansas state teaching license. I was particularly bitter about this, because the class had nothing to do with how effective a teacher I was. I might have been able to demonstrate some actual competence in teaching - really prove that I deserved my salary and the continued good graces of the Arkansas Department of Education - had I simply been observed in my classroom. However, when judged on my ability to manage my life, I failed miserably at every exercise, embarrassed myself in class, and began to see what my friend Amanda was talking about when she told me I multitasked like a man. (There were several men in the class. None of them multitasked worse than I did).
My co-worker Gary led the seminar and assigned us monthly readings from books called things like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and other horrors. I was doing terribly by the second meeting, and it was clear that, as a modus operandi, I preferred and was predisposed to procrastination over productivity.
But the absolute pinnacle of my inability to manage my life came during our final assignment. Gary had been threatening that we would at some point be tasked with creating our five and ten year plans. Up until that point I was convinced it would become some optional project assigned on the last day of class; I thought maybe because we had spent more time than alloted in the syllabus practicing things like to-do list-writing and task prioritization, that maybe there simply would not be time - like what used to happen to the last unit in tenth grade English. But then again, this was a class about time management, and Gary has apportioned the time well despite straying slightly from the syllabus.
The idea of a five or ten year plan terrified (and still terrifies) me. When the day finally came, I asked Gary if he could model an example, and he started to laugh, realized that I was serious, and then denied my request. He told me to do my best and left me to my own devices.
I didn't even try to write the five year plan. It was too soon. Planning to achieve something in five years meant having to be working toward it now, and I certainly was not in a position to accomplish anything that soon.
So I moved straight onto the ten year plan. I wrote "TEN YEAR PLAN" at the top of the page, played with my pencil some, then observed with envy the speed and ambition with which my colleagues wrote their responses. I was foolish to assume that because we were all just about the same age, the others in the class would be equally lacking in goals and plans. But watching this high strung group of 20 somethings scribble furiously without pause put me ill at ease and I shifted, noticeably, in my chair. I jotted a few things down that I might want to do some day, hoping I would be allowed to pass when we shared as a group.
Gary asked us to go around the room and read either of our plans. My nemesis in the class, whom I barely knew but managed to loathe with irrational ferocity, volunteered to go first. "Well, I want to go to Yale to work towards a PhD in English Literature, focusing on post-feminist readings of the classics. If I want to publish in my first year, I will need to start emailing professors this month to secure a research position. I have to take my GRE at the end of the month and complete my applications within the next month. After I publish in the first year, I plan to spend the summer researching at Oxford, the grant for which I'll have to secure next fall, making it even more crucial to pair with a distinguished scholar this summer. I hope to finish my doctorate in 4 years and publish two major works in the process. I plan to secure a job after my fourth year, and finish my dissertation shortly thereafter." I may not have gotten it word for word, but that certainly captures the drama.
Now, I have trouble keeping my facial expressions to myself in general, but after hearing that, I think I might have actually buried my face in my hands and moaned. I half-listened to a few other people's plans, many of which included new career paths, higher education, marriage, babies, and location changes.
When my turn came, part of me wanted to pass, but I had already reacted so badly to others' plans, that I thought it would be even more embarrassing to forfeit my turn. So I sat up, cleared my throat, and read my ten-year plan:
TEN YEAR PLAN
1. Learn French.
2. Improve my Spanish.
3. Get my PhD in something.
4. Own a cat.
5. Flip an apartment.
6. Build something.
7. Publish an essay.
8. Learn to ride a bike.
After finishing, I was afraid to look up. Most people in the group probably thought I was playing around and not taking the exercise seriously. They were partly right; I didn't believe that people actually lived their lives this way and thought the exercise was a little stupid. I mean really, who actually sticks to these things?
But my classmates were also wrong - it wasn't that I didn't try. There is a side of me - greatly exaggerated whilst I was a teacher, spending as much time as I did planning out even the most minute details of each day - that very much wanted to be that person: a person who not only had a plan, but who sought and found comfort in having a plan. It was this side of me that forced me to read the self-help book chapters Gary would prescribe, in hopes they would eradicate the comfort I habitually found in the certainty of my uncertainty.
And yet, another part of me was perfectly proud of my plan. Its flexibility, its ability to accommodate adventure and personal growth and change all made me want to catch the eye of my enemy and stick my tongue out at her. My plan is a million times more awesome than your plan. In fact, I am a million times more awesome than you.
And, after a year, my feelings have not really changed. There is a great tension between my desire to plan nothing and keep my options fully open and my desire to construct for myself an ambitious and well-laid path. This tension does not seem to want to go away. It refuses to let the knots at my shoulder blades loosen, to let my breath slow and deepen, and to allow me to gently resign to either fate. It is pleased to have successfully evicted from my soul the confidence of my college years and to have cultivated in its place an unabating feeling of doubt.
Most of all, it enjoys watching me constantly bewilder myself, evermore amazed by the nonsensical things that I convince myself are a normal part of life. In the end, I regard the way I am currently living my life and planning my future much in the way I regard dogs walking on three legs: it's not done well, but I'm surprised to see it done at all. And I suppose that's okay for now.
I mean, I like those dogs.
My co-worker Gary led the seminar and assigned us monthly readings from books called things like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and other horrors. I was doing terribly by the second meeting, and it was clear that, as a modus operandi, I preferred and was predisposed to procrastination over productivity.
But the absolute pinnacle of my inability to manage my life came during our final assignment. Gary had been threatening that we would at some point be tasked with creating our five and ten year plans. Up until that point I was convinced it would become some optional project assigned on the last day of class; I thought maybe because we had spent more time than alloted in the syllabus practicing things like to-do list-writing and task prioritization, that maybe there simply would not be time - like what used to happen to the last unit in tenth grade English. But then again, this was a class about time management, and Gary has apportioned the time well despite straying slightly from the syllabus.
The idea of a five or ten year plan terrified (and still terrifies) me. When the day finally came, I asked Gary if he could model an example, and he started to laugh, realized that I was serious, and then denied my request. He told me to do my best and left me to my own devices.
I didn't even try to write the five year plan. It was too soon. Planning to achieve something in five years meant having to be working toward it now, and I certainly was not in a position to accomplish anything that soon.
So I moved straight onto the ten year plan. I wrote "TEN YEAR PLAN" at the top of the page, played with my pencil some, then observed with envy the speed and ambition with which my colleagues wrote their responses. I was foolish to assume that because we were all just about the same age, the others in the class would be equally lacking in goals and plans. But watching this high strung group of 20 somethings scribble furiously without pause put me ill at ease and I shifted, noticeably, in my chair. I jotted a few things down that I might want to do some day, hoping I would be allowed to pass when we shared as a group.
Gary asked us to go around the room and read either of our plans. My nemesis in the class, whom I barely knew but managed to loathe with irrational ferocity, volunteered to go first. "Well, I want to go to Yale to work towards a PhD in English Literature, focusing on post-feminist readings of the classics. If I want to publish in my first year, I will need to start emailing professors this month to secure a research position. I have to take my GRE at the end of the month and complete my applications within the next month. After I publish in the first year, I plan to spend the summer researching at Oxford, the grant for which I'll have to secure next fall, making it even more crucial to pair with a distinguished scholar this summer. I hope to finish my doctorate in 4 years and publish two major works in the process. I plan to secure a job after my fourth year, and finish my dissertation shortly thereafter." I may not have gotten it word for word, but that certainly captures the drama.
Now, I have trouble keeping my facial expressions to myself in general, but after hearing that, I think I might have actually buried my face in my hands and moaned. I half-listened to a few other people's plans, many of which included new career paths, higher education, marriage, babies, and location changes.
When my turn came, part of me wanted to pass, but I had already reacted so badly to others' plans, that I thought it would be even more embarrassing to forfeit my turn. So I sat up, cleared my throat, and read my ten-year plan:
TEN YEAR PLAN
1. Learn French.
2. Improve my Spanish.
3. Get my PhD in something.
4. Own a cat.
5. Flip an apartment.
6. Build something.
7. Publish an essay.
8. Learn to ride a bike.
After finishing, I was afraid to look up. Most people in the group probably thought I was playing around and not taking the exercise seriously. They were partly right; I didn't believe that people actually lived their lives this way and thought the exercise was a little stupid. I mean really, who actually sticks to these things?
But my classmates were also wrong - it wasn't that I didn't try. There is a side of me - greatly exaggerated whilst I was a teacher, spending as much time as I did planning out even the most minute details of each day - that very much wanted to be that person: a person who not only had a plan, but who sought and found comfort in having a plan. It was this side of me that forced me to read the self-help book chapters Gary would prescribe, in hopes they would eradicate the comfort I habitually found in the certainty of my uncertainty.
And yet, another part of me was perfectly proud of my plan. Its flexibility, its ability to accommodate adventure and personal growth and change all made me want to catch the eye of my enemy and stick my tongue out at her. My plan is a million times more awesome than your plan. In fact, I am a million times more awesome than you.
And, after a year, my feelings have not really changed. There is a great tension between my desire to plan nothing and keep my options fully open and my desire to construct for myself an ambitious and well-laid path. This tension does not seem to want to go away. It refuses to let the knots at my shoulder blades loosen, to let my breath slow and deepen, and to allow me to gently resign to either fate. It is pleased to have successfully evicted from my soul the confidence of my college years and to have cultivated in its place an unabating feeling of doubt.
Most of all, it enjoys watching me constantly bewilder myself, evermore amazed by the nonsensical things that I convince myself are a normal part of life. In the end, I regard the way I am currently living my life and planning my future much in the way I regard dogs walking on three legs: it's not done well, but I'm surprised to see it done at all. And I suppose that's okay for now.
I mean, I like those dogs.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Welcome and why I hate my twenties
I've been duped.
Upon turning 20, and then subsequently 21, I was assured by many 30 and 40 somethings that their twenties were certainly their favorite decade. Now, after having barely survived my first four years of it, I'm convinced that all of these people, during their teens, and thirties, and forties, were subjected to varied forms of unspeakable torture, and only then could they conceivably claim that their twenties were the best years of their lives. It is also possible that some might not remember much of their twenties or are, in fact, still 19. I gladly entertain any of those explanations.
So I am four years in and still waiting for the good stuff. And part of me thinks, "I have six more years for it to get good." And the more vociferous part of me thinks loudly, "HOLY CRAP, I WOULD RATHER EAT GLASS THAN PUT UP WITH SIX MORE YEARS OF THIS BULLSHIT."
These are the things that my twenties were supposed to guarantee me:
1. Fun.
2. Freedom.
3. Independence.
4. Development of some career goals.
5. An expansive "network."
6. Maturity.
I can safely say that I have less of all of those things since entering my twenties. In fact, here is the list of things to anticipate that I would distribute for those new twenty somethings foolishly looking forward to the ten years ahead:
1. Hangovers that last two days.
2. Directionlessness and the "quarter-life crisis" (I have had several already at this point.)
3. Living on a budget.
4. Changing jobs, haircuts, boyfriends, and apartments every six to twelve months and exhibiting an acute fear of committing to any of them.
5. Your first gray hair. And then the 10 after that, which suck a lot more than the first.
6. Feeling that, despite a decade having passed, you don't act that differently than you did when you were 14. And you still get zits.
Anyway, after having complained to many of my friends about how difficult and un-fun life in our twenties can be, I have begun to realize that I am not the only one suffering from the anxiety that invariably comes with a period of life characterized by instability, frequent change, and incessant decision-making. In fact, for the many of us who thought it would be all Cosmo's and sample sales, I'd say most of us feel downright bamboozled.
So I decided to start a little blog dedicated to airing frustrations or showing appreciation for our twenties. I fear I lack profundity, and I am not a brilliant writer, but I am hoping that others willing to contribute will fill those gaps. Spread the word to anyone you think might be interested in reading or contributing. Comment liberally, and email me if you'd like to author an post.
Upon turning 20, and then subsequently 21, I was assured by many 30 and 40 somethings that their twenties were certainly their favorite decade. Now, after having barely survived my first four years of it, I'm convinced that all of these people, during their teens, and thirties, and forties, were subjected to varied forms of unspeakable torture, and only then could they conceivably claim that their twenties were the best years of their lives. It is also possible that some might not remember much of their twenties or are, in fact, still 19. I gladly entertain any of those explanations.
So I am four years in and still waiting for the good stuff. And part of me thinks, "I have six more years for it to get good." And the more vociferous part of me thinks loudly, "HOLY CRAP, I WOULD RATHER EAT GLASS THAN PUT UP WITH SIX MORE YEARS OF THIS BULLSHIT."
These are the things that my twenties were supposed to guarantee me:
1. Fun.
2. Freedom.
3. Independence.
4. Development of some career goals.
5. An expansive "network."
6. Maturity.
I can safely say that I have less of all of those things since entering my twenties. In fact, here is the list of things to anticipate that I would distribute for those new twenty somethings foolishly looking forward to the ten years ahead:
1. Hangovers that last two days.
2. Directionlessness and the "quarter-life crisis" (I have had several already at this point.)
3. Living on a budget.
4. Changing jobs, haircuts, boyfriends, and apartments every six to twelve months and exhibiting an acute fear of committing to any of them.
5. Your first gray hair. And then the 10 after that, which suck a lot more than the first.
6. Feeling that, despite a decade having passed, you don't act that differently than you did when you were 14. And you still get zits.
Anyway, after having complained to many of my friends about how difficult and un-fun life in our twenties can be, I have begun to realize that I am not the only one suffering from the anxiety that invariably comes with a period of life characterized by instability, frequent change, and incessant decision-making. In fact, for the many of us who thought it would be all Cosmo's and sample sales, I'd say most of us feel downright bamboozled.
So I decided to start a little blog dedicated to airing frustrations or showing appreciation for our twenties. I fear I lack profundity, and I am not a brilliant writer, but I am hoping that others willing to contribute will fill those gaps. Spread the word to anyone you think might be interested in reading or contributing. Comment liberally, and email me if you'd like to author an post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
