Tags
art, grad, millennial, NYC, post-college, quarter life, twenties, writing
Quarter Life
Feeling of regret, loneliness, lost, hopes dashed, dead end, no goal, want to leave home, but no good way to do it, relationships, the few successful classmates, questioning whether to pursue art.
Clearly, this is a cliché topic to begin with, but it’s the only thing that has been on my mind for the past few weeks. Graduating college last June was a moment I had been waiting for since the summer before my freshman year. Let’s just say the whole college thing didn’t particularily work out for me and because of many reasons I ended up at a local college, literally only five minutes away from my childhood home. So while all of my friends said bon voyage to the Valley I stayed stuck in limbo at my parents house. All that kept me driven, during the four years I spent there, was the hope and promise that I would make it out of my hometown at the end, and finally be able to begin the dream life I had imagined for myself ever since I saw the film Rent in high school.
I’m here now. I made it to NYC. I made it into an MFA Program. And I’m working on a novel. The trouble is I need to find a grown-up job to feed these dreams. Ok it’s not that I don’t want one, but its pretty freaking hard to find one. What scares me though and what I could never say to anyone in person is that I’m scared shitless that my dreams won’t come true and the run of the mill job I’m searching for and hopefully will have in a few weeks will ultimately be the only reality I’ll ever know. My life will be insignificant and my parents were wrong every time they have told me that I’d impact the world. Wow do I sound like a stereotypical millennial right now…
Thoughts and Ramblings 
I have now worked a number of terrible jobs in order to survive. I told myself I would write about it to push me to through the dread of traveling two hours to pull a lever for eight hours. I have worried a lot about failure to thrive. And for a while I failed to thrive. It is a terrible feeling, but it’s all lies, and eventually you grab on to something that’s true and it all seems obvious.
The only thing I would add, which you probably figured out yourself ten minutes after publishing this, is that “insignificant” is not a thing. “Not known” is more likely, and that’s fine. That’s real. Insignificance is something people in airplanes feel about the cars below, while astronauts come home knowing that everything is connected. We’re not insignificant because we’re on the ground. We’re a part of the world.