Dear Fellow 9-5ers,

We are going to be more than OK.

If Facebook were created to give me constant anxiety about my dating life, then Twitter were created to make me feel like the dirt beneath freelancers’ feet. Let me explain.

This past summer, I attended a blogging conference because I like blogging and I like conferences. You do the arithmetic. At the time, my blog was not on this gorgeous site; it was still a rinky dink Tumblr POS with a title that didn’t make any sense. But, I strolled in to the conference with some pretty baller business cards in tow ready to recite my “Yeah, I’m new to this; just wanted to check it out…I write about navigating life in your twenties” elevator speech. I am blogger; hear me roar.

After I left the conference, I decided to follow many of the people I met in addition to the bloggers I already adore. Nowadays, when I scroll through my Twitter feed, it’s an endless stream of dribble about 2 Chainz from my friends juxtaposed with 140-character dissertations from people who are freelancing, attending graduate school or, let’s face it, living a much more vibrant and colorful life than my conformist Corporate existence. And then I feel guilty because I’ve been bombarded with propaganda directing me to pursue my passion. Follow my dreams. But instead I designed the sell out sign myself and then snuggled up next to the nearest security blanket.

Or so I’ve been taught to believe.

Also this summer, I read Meg Jay’s and I think it’s cheesy to say a book changed my life so I guess a piece of non-fiction shifted my existence. I could list dozens of reasons why this book shook me but you should go read it. No, really, read it. No one reads anymore! But if you can’t muster up the energy to digest some pages, here’s the kind of life-altering shit she’s saying:

“I’m not talking about settling. I’m talking about starting. Twentysomethings who don’t get started wind up with blank resumes and out-of-touch lives only to settle far more down the road.”

Because of the pervasive passion rhetoric, we’re trained to think that if we do work a 9-5, or some variation of 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, we have sold out. We are on the wrong track and headed to an abyss of boredom and dissatisfaction when we peer at our lives from both intimate and distant angles. We are supposed to be in love with our lives and in love with our jobs and in love period. But, I’d like to wave the red flag and call bullshit on that play.

Sure, not everyone’s made for a 9-5. I get that. That’s why there are strippers, right? But, doing it or not doing it doesn’t make us any more or any less. Especially now. Especially when we’re standing in front of a pebble-less path, completely uncertain yet walking in blind faith. We don’t know how our lives will turn out or who we will become; who will cross those paths and who will walk behind or beside us. We don’t know. But we have to start somewhere. Something about planting roots or sowing seeds or something.

So, I say drink that chalky caffeinated coffee while you scroll the morning news. Sit in that traffic with only the power of Buddha to keep you from smashing the car moving 10mph in front of you. Laugh at those corny co-worker jokes and drink at those holiday happy hours. Sit under those fluorescent lights in your windowless office. Pay your rent and take care of yourself with that paycheck. And, whatever you do, do a damn good job. This is your start. You aren’t just like every other average American wishing they worked on the Kane show instead of listening to it. You aren’t a sell out or a conformist or any of those other words the rich hipster kids in college used. You aren’t lost or wayward.  You aren’t going to go on to live a colorless life wishing you never settled. You are you, dammit.  You. Are. You. And, if you ever watched Barney, you know that means something. So, if you don’t wake up wanting to roll around in bed with your job or smother it with wet kisses, well, then, there are people who can fill that need for you.

You’ll look back and realize what you already knew: you’re going to be more than OK.

Xoxo,

Tyece