Why Can't I Feel Young and Fabulous?
So, I kind of wish that at some point along the way I could get to be young and irresponsible. Like, okay, I'm twenty-five. I've got a Master's Degree. I've got a job that, while I'm not over the moon about it, isn't too shabby for a fresh out of school job, and it's not like I have to stay for forever and a day. I've got friends, no girlfriend, but I'll live. But somehow along the way I started feeling like my life was something I tried to squeeze in on the weekends, which, if ever, seems like something that shouldn't really happen until at least until I'm married and juggling dance recitals and soccer and shit.
I don't know. Look. I'm gonna wax emo here for a little while. So if anyone wants to just get a sandwich, and then come back and just read the next entry on your friends page, I won't take it too hard.
It's just that sometimes you feel like everyone or at least someone else is out there having all the fun. Granted, I find most types of fun involving more than five people kind of draining and can only really drag myself into it once every couple of weeks or so, but it's just. I mean. Jesus.
Okay, let's try this: You float through high school, coasting on your big brain, and you hear about how awesome college is. Then you go, and it's like a big intellectual boot camp with no girls, which is fun in its way (minus the no girls part), but you feel like you're having to really work at it to get out of the house on weekends. You go visit people in other towns at other schools, and it seems like socialization just happens. It's not effortless, but it isn't pulling teeth either.
So you finally finish up with college, and you go right into grad school because if you do it that way, you don't have to take the GRE and only need one letter of recommendation. Grad school is a little better than college on balance. They don't seem to want to break you on general principle, and it's kind of nice when your classes take the form of a bi-weekly lecture and then a tangentially related, highly open ended project upon whose coolness your grade will largely depend. It's nice, but it kind of feels like you're not really part of the world, and that amount of freedom kind of makes you feel like you know what it would be like to be unemployed only your mom's got your back financially, so not really.
Then you move out to what was billed to you as the fresh-out-of-school capital of the southeast, working a job that kind of makes your inner hippie cry, but, you know, not too bad and only a little, and you get a dog and some friends and you like it pretty well, but it's not the revelation it was supposed to be, and you're already planning your next big move, because, no, it'll be the next place that's really awesome.
Oh yeah, and somewhere in there, you have a girlfriend, one girlfriend, that you think you love, and who breaks your heart and ruins you for about six months to a year depending on how you look at it, but that's okay, because that kind of pain let's you know you're alive, but other than that, your romantic life seems to be a rehashing of the same old story: you like a girl, you do the talky talky thing for a few weeks, screw up your courage, tell her how you feel, and then everything goes to hell, and you're getting fucking tired of it because it seems like other people are out there at least getting a little fun with their romantic disasters.
And you end the night with a slightly modified version of that quote from "High Fidelity" stuck in your head: "Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at the age of 26, and we were of that disposition."
I don't know. Look. I'm gonna wax emo here for a little while. So if anyone wants to just get a sandwich, and then come back and just read the next entry on your friends page, I won't take it too hard.
It's just that sometimes you feel like everyone or at least someone else is out there having all the fun. Granted, I find most types of fun involving more than five people kind of draining and can only really drag myself into it once every couple of weeks or so, but it's just. I mean. Jesus.
Okay, let's try this: You float through high school, coasting on your big brain, and you hear about how awesome college is. Then you go, and it's like a big intellectual boot camp with no girls, which is fun in its way (minus the no girls part), but you feel like you're having to really work at it to get out of the house on weekends. You go visit people in other towns at other schools, and it seems like socialization just happens. It's not effortless, but it isn't pulling teeth either.
So you finally finish up with college, and you go right into grad school because if you do it that way, you don't have to take the GRE and only need one letter of recommendation. Grad school is a little better than college on balance. They don't seem to want to break you on general principle, and it's kind of nice when your classes take the form of a bi-weekly lecture and then a tangentially related, highly open ended project upon whose coolness your grade will largely depend. It's nice, but it kind of feels like you're not really part of the world, and that amount of freedom kind of makes you feel like you know what it would be like to be unemployed only your mom's got your back financially, so not really.
Then you move out to what was billed to you as the fresh-out-of-school capital of the southeast, working a job that kind of makes your inner hippie cry, but, you know, not too bad and only a little, and you get a dog and some friends and you like it pretty well, but it's not the revelation it was supposed to be, and you're already planning your next big move, because, no, it'll be the next place that's really awesome.
Oh yeah, and somewhere in there, you have a girlfriend, one girlfriend, that you think you love, and who breaks your heart and ruins you for about six months to a year depending on how you look at it, but that's okay, because that kind of pain let's you know you're alive, but other than that, your romantic life seems to be a rehashing of the same old story: you like a girl, you do the talky talky thing for a few weeks, screw up your courage, tell her how you feel, and then everything goes to hell, and you're getting fucking tired of it because it seems like other people are out there at least getting a little fun with their romantic disasters.
And you end the night with a slightly modified version of that quote from "High Fidelity" stuck in your head: "Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at the age of 26, and we were of that disposition."