Category Archives: Career

What Am I Doing With My Life?

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It’s a question that plagues me virtually every day. It slithers through my mind and creeps in to conversations with my friends. Usually, my friends and I blurt it out jokingly in the middle of a quarter-life crisis conversation while knowing deep down, we actually have asked ourselves that question time and time again. And, each time, when we dig for the answer, we come up short.

I spent four years in high school building up to college. Spent four years in college building up until this point. I never knew the exact details of my post-grad life, but I knew the framework. Job. Place. Stability. Sorta. Now, I’m peering ahead to the rest of my life and it’s an unlined sheet of paper. For someone who spends the majority of her life planning and an iota of time actually enjoying the fruits of her labor, this unlined sheet feels like the kiss of death. It feels like everything and nothing. It feels like possiblities juxtaposed with indecision. It feels scary as shit.

And, it’s not always work. It’s my LIFE. People, relationships, love. Planting my roots.  It’s all of the things that you are supposed to have to be healthy and happy. And, while I feel I am on a launching pad to those prizes, the spring hasn’t been released. So, I’m sort of just standing on some wobbly thing waiting.

Everyone tells me I will be fine. The arguably anal retentive behaviors that have gotten me to this point are the same ones that will get me to the next point, moving closer to the target until I strike my personally defined bullseye. But, just as someone told me last week, “Oh, you’re going to be fine. And, you’ll never believe me, but you’re going to be fine.”

I asked one of my best friends tonight the same question that has anchored this post: “What am I doing with my life?” She replied, “Living.” Maybe she’s right. Maybe right now I should soak up my life for the beauty, mess, and uncertainty that it is. Maybe I should trust that I am doing the right things and asking the right questions and surrounding myself with the right people. Maybe it’s OK to still question. Maybe it’s when we stop questioning what we’re doing that we start settling. Maybe we should ask ourselves every single day what we’re doing with our lives to avoid the epidemic of complacency. But, maybe we shouldn’t let those questions stop us from taking a deep breath, trusting that we will be fine, and just living.

Love freely,

tY

Unoriginal Sin

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Dear fellow Millenials,

Fresh off a riveting night of watching a CNBC special about Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook phenomenon, I am a wee bit scared. I am afraid that we are becoming a generation of unoriginal thinkers.

I know. I sound as though I am 75 years old. But, hear me out.

This thought about unoriginal thinkers surfaced a few weeks ago when I told someone I hate the “Like” button on Facebook. Admittedly, this was a hypocritical comment seeing as how 1) I use that button multiple times a week and 2) consider it quite a compliment anytime someone “likes” one of my status updates, particularly any related to Free Love. (Although, I heart comments more than likes but beggers aka not famous bloggers can’t be choosy). Nonetheless, I’m entitled to hypocrisy every now and again.

Anonymous: “You HATE the ‘like’ button?!”

Me: “Yes. No one comments on anything anymore.”

Anonymous: “Yeah, but sometimes you just like something. You don’t want to comment.”

Anonymous, therein lies the problem.

I don’t want to rant and rave about social media because to be frank, if it weren’t for social media, I wouldn’t have a blog. Point blank period. For that reason alone, I’m eternally grateful to social media. I’m not going to talk about the limitless opportunities in the palm of our hands or roar about how my generation is going to cure cancer or marvel at the Zora Neale Hurstons of the world who set the path before us. I know those things. You know those things. I just want to ask why the hell can’t anyone have an original thought anymore?

It’s 2012 where you can retweet, repin, and reblog until you’ve restrained any creativity left in your limbs. So, I am going to raise a toast to social media. Here’s to you, social media, for challenging us every day to think outside the mental templates you’ve gifted us. Let’s own an original thought. Claim an opinion. Become a conglomeration of active observations married to colorful inspirations (my apologies; it’s the poet in me.) Let’s not become damp sidewalks of images or status updates or Instagram photos raining down on us. Let’s not just like something. Let’s love something, damnit.

::steps down from soapbox.::

Love freely,

tY

Commencement Speech Free Love Style

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Dear Class of 2012,

My Facebook news feed is inundated with status updates about “writing my last paper” and “going to my last formal.” Graduation is right around the corner.

While I bemoan the fact that I am 17 days away from having officially been a college graduate for a year, I find it fitting to reflect back on the past year of my life. Nostalgia often causes us to do that.

In a few weeks, you will be pushed in to the real world. And, that is what it is—a push. Because, not many people, at least not those with an ounce of a free spirit, would choose adult life. Some of you will be blessed with the opportunity to prolong your summers before you start work or graduate school or the inevitable move back home with your parents. Others of you will join summer programs or jobs early and have to bid a premature goodbye to the college microcosm that must be credited with making you half, if not all, of the person you currently are.

So, what is it that a lowly 22 year old can actually say? In fact, most college grads are 22 (I, however, started kindergarten early…bam.) It was only a year ago, May 4 to be exact, that I hopped on a plane with my dad to apartment hunt for my first place in Massachusetts (a 500 square foot studio that I shared with my terror of a cat, Roxy). But, as irony would have it, the 365 days between then and now have taught me just as much about life and myself as those four years I spent in college.

If college taught you anything, it was how to be a decent and articulate human being. Your boss will never ask what you got on your research methods final. So, take the chip off your shoulder, if it’s there, about your intelligence or your overachieverness. Everyone you work with will be smart, sharp, and on their game. That is why you have been asked to join them. Watch them. Observe them. Absorb them. Decide what you like and don’t like about how they lead and tuck it in to your arsenal for the day when you are running shit. Because, yes, there will be a day when you are running shit.

Learn to be OK being alone (literally alone, not in the relationship sense) There are times when you are the only person in this world who will be able to pick yourself up. Keep in touch with your friends. Like really keep in touch. Call. Email. Take buses or trains or planes to see them. Keep your wine rack stacked, packed, and ready to attack. Don’t scoff at people with match.com accounts; real world dating is awkward and nearly impossible. Get drunk every now and again, just to remind yourself you’ve still got it. Pursue your passion, even if means blogging at 11 p.m. when you’re snuggled under the covers after a 10 hour work day (Oh, wait, is that just me?) Yes, find some way to pursue your passion, but remember no one is responsible for your rent except for you. Don’t label the corporate america kids as boring and don’t deem the creative kids irrational. It is OK to have different panels of yourself. Cry during the bad moments but breathe in the good ones. Those good ones are your lifeblood; the bad ones are only scars. Don’t be open to change; be prepared for it. It is the only thing ahead.

Now, take everything I said and throw it away. The greatest gift you’ll ever have as an adult is the ability to think and decide for yourself.

Well, there is one thing I actually want you to take to heart. Don’t stop reading Free Love. Ever.

Love freely,

tY

8 months, 8 quotes.

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So, it’s here. My last week in Massachusetts.

I could write a saga about my many ups and downs here, but I think it would be more fitting (and quite frankly a lot less work) to pick 8 quotes that I think embody the time I’ve spent here.

1) “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” -Neale Donald Walsch

2) Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming.- from 11 Things to Know at 25 (ish)

3) Unravel the knots that keep you from living a healthy, whole life, and do it now, before any more time passes.- also from 11 Things to Know at 25 (ish)

4) “No one leaves this life unscathed.”- Katie Couric

5) “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” -Oscar Wilde

6) “I know you’re smart. But everyone here is smart. Smart isn’t enough. The kind of people I want on my research team are those who will help everyone feel happy to be here. ” ― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

7) “I have just returned from Boston. It is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there.” -Fred Allen

8) “Leaving is bittersweet but after 8 tumultuous months, I’m leaving here in peace. That’s all I wanted.” -my tweet from earlier today.

The 5 Post Grad Types

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Happy 2012 and all that jazz.

While talking to a friend today, I listed off what I feel are the 5 types of people I know in post grad life. No need for further introduction; here it goes.

1) The Scholars: Why only stay in college for 4 years when you can extend it…with grad school! These are the people who either legitmately need an advanced degree to do what they want to do (in which case, props to you) or the people who couldn’t find a job and wanted to sound like they were doing something respectable.

2) The Overachievers: You know that kid who whined about getting an 89.5% on a test? Hate to say it, but that same kid is probably working at a decent job right now. These were the people who could’ve used a few more party nights and a few less study sessions, but their hard work probably paid off.

3) The Loafs: Definition—opposite of the overachievers. These are the people who thought they would be in college forever. They didn’t plan for what happens after those four years and are now scratching their heads having no idea what’s next nor how to get to it even if they tried. Instead, they would rather relive their college glory days.

4) The Underdogs: This a subcategory of the overachievers. These are the people who kicked butt in college but the recession is just being merciless at the moment.

5) The Trust Fund Babies: Ah, my favorite. These are the people who, regardless of what they did in undergrad, are living the life right now. They’re traveling the world, working at those cool jobs in expensive cities, and are finding the self they lost in all those Tequila shots in college. And, they are doing all of this on their parents dime. You want to hate the trust fund babies. You want to say, “One day real life is going to set in for them.” But, let’s be real…they’ll be living off of that money while the rest of us slave away.

Despite the differences among these groups, there’s one similarity. We’re all probably in some sort of post grad rut. We all miss the days when Sallie Mae wasn’t eating our checking account and when we used Sundays for sleeping instead of grocery shopping. In the end, we’re all still figuring it out.

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