Do Not Worry

Because life after college can often hold uncertainty for most of us, it’s hard not to worry about where we will be employed in the future, or how we will make our money and how much, or who we will spend our time with down the road. Although we know worrying cannot solve anything, it is a constant burden for us. But that’s just the point. None of us can know the future and what it holds for any one of us. We must live life in the now and accept that the future is beyond our grasp.

Today, I had my first job interview. It went well, but as it’s only preliminary, it didn’t do much in the way of boosting my confidence. When I got home from the long traffic-filled drive to downtown LA and back, I absentmindedly scrolled through my Instagram feed, and came across a Bible verse. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” –Matthew 6:34 This passage was exactly what I needed to hear today. I know a lot of people aren’t religious, but I think this speaks to anyone and everyone who worries about what tomorrow will bring, how they will provide for themselves or their loved ones, and anything else they are unsure of.
  
Call it the universe, or fate, destiny, or God, but I think if I were to ask, most people would say that they believe the future will work itself out, one way or another. Whatever happens in our lives, the earth will still turn and life will go on, no matter what events or choices present themselves in the process or how much we worry about them. In the midst of worrying though, it’s hard to remember that tomorrow will take care of itself. Because I have my faith, I can rely on God to provide for me, even if it’s not in the way I expect. I know not everyone has that same belief, but it’s better to have faith in something than spend my time worrying about the things I can’t possibly know.
  
Today, I needed to be reminded to take a breath and let tomorrow be tomorrow. Of course, I do want to do my part in taking the right steps towards my future, but in the end nothing is up to me. My life has a path, and I cannot know where it will lead or what is along the road, but I know that it can’t ever stop. Life is inevitable, we might as well live it to the fullest in the present. So if you’re troubled about what your future will be, don’t because tomorrow will take care of itself and each day has enough trouble of it’s own.

Job Application Jitters

What’s the biggest goal for a recent college graduate? To get a job! This is the most important and most daunting task in front of those of us trying to enter into the adult world. Over the past several weeks, I have been applying to jobs left and right, just praying someone will give me at least an interview. As an English major with less than 2+ years of experience in my desired field, it’s hard to get a company to notice you, among the myriad of other people applying for the same position. Sometimes it seems unfair that your experience doesn’t add up to a company’s expectations simply because education has been your main source of experience.
   
Another problem I’ve come across is that many of the jobs and internships I am qualified for are unpaid, something that is ill suited for someone trying to jumpstart a life. Unfortunately, making money is the only way to keep going in this crazy world. Some would say in the digital age, there are ample jobs for creative types, or at least more than there used to be. However, it’s difficult to sift through everything out there for just one that will give you a chance over hundreds of other applicants. It’s so hard to know how you can make yourself stand out from the rest in a resume, references, and experience. I suppose we all just have to put our best foot forward and hope someone out there will take notice.
   
This entire process can be extremely nerve-racking and at many times unrewarding. However there is an important lesson for us in this time of struggle. Even if you apply to a hundred jobs, it doesn’t matter that you don’t get ninety-nine of them, you only need one company to say yes to you. Although I’m not there yet, I know that I have to keep working towards my goals and never stop until I get there because there is no other way to achieve. Even when you’re exhausted and want to give up, don’t because hard work will always pay off in the end.

Dress Up

    When we were little we all used to play dress up. And as you got older you would only dress up for special occasions, maybe a dress here a tie there. But what I’m learning about the world of professionalism is how to dress like an adult. Throughout college, my go to outfit was a pair of leggings, Toms, and a tank top. Now I know this won’t cut it in the professional world and it’s time for me to look for something a little more grown up. The problem for me is that right now, shopping is a nightmare. I am in the midst of losing weight through Weight Watchers, which has been going wonderfully, however I’m still not my goal weight yet. Being a curvy woman makes shopping difficult to begin with, but add size fluctuation and it becomes even more frustrating. Although it’s not fun shopping for professional clothes right now, I know it’s something I can’t avoid much longer.

    When I think about my future self, I see a woman who is poised, dressed perfectly and professionally with a great job and who ultimately has her life together. As of now, I am none of those things, but I think it all comes one step at a time. My first step, aside from applying to jobs, is looking the part. As much as it pains me, I have to trade in my leggings for trousers and my tank tops for blazers.

    Since this is new territory for me, it can be difficult to decide how I feel about this. On the one hand, I’m excited to move forward with my life and be the woman I see myself becoming. On the other hand, there is a loss I’m beginning to feel as my college self starts to slip away to be replaced by the more sophisticated model of me. Don’t get me wrong, sophisticated is a good thing, but being able to throw on whatever you want and go to class was pretty nice too.

    I think in the end, growing up and nostalgia go hand in hand, but there must be a balance. There is always going to be a longing for those comfortable college years, but I know as much as I want to live in my yoga pants and flip flops, eventually I have to move on to more adult things like button downs and heels. I know getting there won’t be easy, but my future self will thank me for all the effort when she’s impeccably dressed. And one day the sophisticated me will look back and smile with only a twinge of nostalgia because the future holds even brighter things.

They (Used to) Tell Me Dream Big

    As a recent college grad, one of the most asked, and possibly most feared questions we can get is what are we going to do now. Some people know exactly what they are going to do right when they get out of school and others have absolutely no idea what they are doing with their lives and are scared stiff at the very prospect. I however, am somewhere in the middle of these two. Right now, all I know is that writing is my passion and that’s all I really want to be doing, and I want to be doing it within the entertainment world. Of course I’m terrified, but I’m also excited to start being who I was always meant to be.

    Now when I tell people that I’m an English major, another one of the most asked questions and subsequently my pet peeve of a question is ‘so are you going to be a teacher?’. The answer to this overly asked question is unequivocally no. As I’ve told many many people, it takes a certain kind of person to be a teacher, and I applaud them, but that’s just not me, it never has been. I think my dreams have always been bigger than that and I’ve known that I wanted to be a writer for most of my life. Sometimes I wish I was meant to do something else, like being a teacher or wanting to work a regular nine to five job, but it’s not who I was meant to be. I was meant to be a writer, a storyteller, a creator of the impossible just by using that thing called imagination and something as simple and complex as words. The art of stringing together words to make thoughts, to create something out of nothing, is what I am absolutely in love with. This is the reason I can’t just settle for anything less than what I want.

    I know there are so many older adults who believe that I should get a ‘practical’ job because you need to pay the bills somehow and because being a writer doesn’t pay much and because breaking into what I actually want to do is hard work and not a lot of people make it. Thinking about it, it’s sad that when I was little, I was told I could do anything I set my mind to, which I still believe to be true, but now that I’m older everyone is telling me just to get a job that pays better. I respect the opinions of my elders, I really do, but at the end of the day I have to do what’s right for me and I know I need to try to make it in my chosen field. Being a creative writer may not be practical, but it’s what I love and trying to do anything else before I’ve even tried getting jobs I actually want would be giving up on my dreams essentially. Sure, some people say it’s just putting them on the back burner and you can still write in your spare time, but let’s be honest, settling for a mediocre dead end job just because it pays the bills is a dream killer and a soul sucking abyss of awfulness. At least that’s the way I see it.

    To an older generation, I get that following my dreams does not seem like the smart way to go, maybe not the most lucrative at first, but I truly believe that I can do great things within my field, if only I am able to get there. This generation is full of people who have created jobs because they simply didn’t want that general nine to five job they knew they'd hate and successfully did something about it. If I don’t try to live my dreams, I’ve already given up completely. And that's just not going to happen because if there’s one thing I am, it’s a fighter. I know what I want, I’m never going to stop fighting until I get it, and when I do get it, I’m never going to stop being passionate about it. So for all of you with dreams you long to achieve, but might not have the support you want, be brave, be bold and do what you love because you only get this life. Don’t waste it trying to fit into some sort of societal mold. We may be learning how to adult, but never forget who you really are.

Pumped For Firsts

In the process of learning how to adult, there are many learning steps to be taken. Last week I got my first car, which I am utterly ecstatic about. Now I know that for a lot of people, a car is something they get at sixteen or seventeen, but that’s just not the way I did things. Since I’ve never really needed a car until now, I’ve also never learned how to pump gas, which is something that was rectified just a few days ago. Things like pumping your gas seem like no big deal, but the thing about doing anything new, is that you need to know how to do it. A family friend explained pumping gas to me as if it were like having sex. Put in crude terms, you just put it in and keep it in until it's finished, you’ll know when it’s finished. When he told me this, I laughed out loud, but thinking about it, he’s not wrong. You could say I lost my gas pumping virginity the other day and like anything, the first time you do something, it’s bound to be clumsy and you’re not going to be a pro at it yet.

    I’m not going to compare all firsts to losing your virginity, but let’s be honest, there are some similarities, no matter if it's a first day at a new job, the first time pumping gas, or the first time trying to barbecue meat. Practice makes perfect, and in most places in my life, I’m hardly there yet.

    I’m beginning to learn that I am in for a lot of firsts being right out of college. You think you know the world from what you’ve lived, but the truth is, there is so much more out there to discover. Every time we begin somewhere new, we have to start all over from the bottom and work our way up. Just like moving from middle school to high school and high school to college, the professional world is not much different in the chain of hierarchy. That’s just how it works, no matter what opinions you may have on it. Personally, I’m excited to see what my next firsts will be. They can be daunting, but it’s important to remember that the things that scare us are often the things most worth doing. We have to accept that we won’t be pros right out of the gate, but with time and diligence, we’ll get there.

A Growing Journey

One thing that can happen when transitioning into full on adulthood is really learning who you are as a person. When you were a teenager, maybe you were beginning to see who you were. In college, you got to see yourself as an independent person while you had no curfew, partied whenever you wanted, skipped a few classes, became a feminist and a democrat, and maybe experimented with all sorts of things from drugs, to sex, to deciding if you wanted to go Greek.  And when all the chaos of being on your own starts to settle in, that is when who you were always meant to be starts to develop. As time goes by, you grow out of those experiments and learn to narrow down what exactly it is you want from life and what you are going to do in order to make it happen.

    I could keep going with the list of what happens mentally as we progress in our lives, but I can’t go much further into the future because this is about where I’m at. I’ve learned so much about myself through the process of growing up in all stages and I know I have much more to do. The prospect of growing even deeper into who I am supposed to be absolutely thrills me. However, there are always fears that I won’t live up to who I want my future self to be. Then again, this is a price we pay for growing up. There is no fast forward or rewind, as we all wish there were. But wouldn’t it be a fantastic discovery if we learned how to replay our greatest hits in life whenever we wanted? Since this hasn’t been discovered yet, we as mere mortals must always live in the present, never able to return to the past and never really certain of what the future might hold for us.

    The truth is, I’m not where I want to be in life yet, but wanting everything to be here now is just a side-effect of being young. I want to be able to skip ahead to all the good stuff, but I know I need to remember to enjoy all the little things and the good things I have now. For instance, I’d say getting my first car this week was a step in the right direction. I am so in love with it and it is just one step closer to the rest of my life. Although there are bigger goals in my mind’s eye, those are for another day and today has its own agenda. There is still so much of myself I have yet to discover, and as I continue the process of being an adult, I have to remember that the journey makes the destination, not the other way around.

We Got This...Right?

So you’ve graduated college. Now you should be prepared to be in the “real world” and know everything there is to know about being an adult, right? I don’t know about other recently graduated individuals, but I know that when it comes to knowing how to adult, I’m far from having it down. All I’ve ever known is how to be a student, to learn, to observe, and honestly how to just screw around. One day maybe I’ll know exactly how to do my taxes, how the stock market works, and what jobs give me the best security. Right now, I’ll settle for someone who hires me despite the fact that I don’t have two plus years of experience because I’ve spent nearly my entire life in school.

    As a recent college grad, sometimes it’s hard to navigate where I’m supposed to be in life. I haven’t landed a job yet, and although it hasn’t been that long since I’ve been out of school, I still don’t feel as accomplished as I would like. Job aside, there are so many things that come with growing up, and it can be difficult to know exactly what those things are until we are faced with them in our own lives. This blog will be my journey through adulthood and where ever that might lead me.

    In the past year, I have learned a lot about myself and a lot about growing up as I studied abroad in Italy and traveled around Europe. Life changing events like this can make you stop and think about who you really are and what you actually want out of life. As for me, I want nothing less than to seek out adventure in all that I do, to chose the life that I love and never let anything get in my way, and to cherish what I have and not dwell on what I don’t. Saying this is all well and good, but sometimes, it can be difficult to not let our emotions cloud our judgement. For instance, as much as I embrace being a strong and independent woman, I can admit that this path can be lonely at times. As great as I am at being alone, I don’t want to be doing it forever, and that desire has only grown with age.

    Being a woman in today’s society, there are so many things thrown at us through social media, television, and other individuals in our lives that can mold or skew our perspectives of what we want or what we should be. Shows like Say Yes To The Dress, the myriad of wedding posts on Pinterest, and people you know getting engaged every other day on Facebook causes us women, especially those of us without a significant other, to not only long for those fairytale wedding moments, but at the same time makes us feel inadequate about what we don’t have in our own lives. Let’s be honest, we all want to be loved and we all want to be able to have our special moments, but the truth is, it doesn’t happen all the time, especially with half of marriages ending in divorce these days. It can be difficult to be a young and independent woman in this day and age, no matter how much #Girlboss support there is out there now.

    Dealing with things like this is just a part of being an adult and trying to do it right. Honestly, there is probably no right way to adult, but then again, how would I know? I’m only getting started.