The Post-Grad Limbo

From a place of in-between:

I’ve had a bad habit of thinking (really believing, down to my core) that the circumstances I sit in are forever. The idea of “temporary” does not exist. This moment, these routines, the life I currently live and the evidence that I comfortably continue to live it seems to directly indicate that things will probably never change — not if I don’t want them to. After all, this is my life. If I rinse, wash, repeat, what reason would my comforts have to suddenly shift? How could they if I hold on tight to my sense of stability? To my need for consistency? Can I will the weather to accommodate me when I don’t have a coat?

Despite our most grandiose efforts, the world keeps turning. The rain keeps pouring. We have to either invest in a damn good umbrella or get out.

Change can be, as the American icon Taylor Swift once said, “a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m always up for a classic life uproot as much as the next girl. I can do adventure and I can do a bit of rudimentary discomfort if it means that eventually, I’ll strike gold. But I try to maintain a semblance of control while doing so, calculating my steps so as to not stumble into the wrong house party.

If you didn’t already know (I certainly didn’t): the idea of control is precisely that. An idea.

We don’t really get to control how incredibly fulfilling or how terribly awful the transitions in our life turn out to be. Contrary to my previous belief, we actually can’t run our lives like a cleverly played game of Monopoly. Instead, to get to the good place means to take a shot in the dark. Risking what we know brings contentment for what we think might bring the extraordinary. In far more sophisticated terms… it really do be like that.

Having just gone through perhaps the biggest shift of my young adult experience and realizing I had no choice over the matter, these past few months as a recent graduate have felt limitless. Limitless in the sense that there are virtually so many options, yet I pause at the thought. In there being nothing but miles of unknown, my knack for indecision — prompted by a surplus of decisions that need making — is paralyzing.

Alas, a never-before-thought-of epiphany: you don’t move by being still. (Fresh concepts only here.)

In an effort to defy this stagnancy that naturally comes with being tossed into a new place where you don’t know what you’re doing, I’ve begun taking note of what I’m learning. Carefully observing the answers slowly revealing themselves through time and a healthy amount of questioning. Cheers to the lessons most effectively learned by my two best friends, trial and error:

The aesthetic of your happiness doesn’t have to look like someone else’s.

Last week, I sat down to doom-scroll and analyze how my life differentiated from that of an Instagram influencer’s curated feed. The funny thing is that I convinced myself I was doing it to become “inspired” by the aesthetically pleasing content she doled out on the daily. And she seemed happy. And her lifestyle was pretty.

Blissfully ignoring the idea of mutual exclusivity, I made “happy” and “aesthetically pleasing” codependent. If said Instagram influencer’s life was nice to look at, it must be nice to live in. She must be happy. How could she not be with her never-ending collection of clothing (and shoes…so many shoes), spacious New York City apartment, and all the signs of a well-adjusted, successful twenty-something?

It was then that I saw myself from the lens of another. I saw a girl swerving from her own lane because she was too busy allowing her neck to be turned by someone else’s. And I realized we have two choices:

We can let our precious hours waste away by waiting and wishing. Taking away the best parts of our unique walks that, when not subjected to the comparison to what is only one shiny part of a life otherwise unedited, actually bring us happiness all on their own.

Or we can separate our world from theirs the way we should have a long time ago and make it decidedly so that how we view our current condition is entirely up to us. In taking the metrics out, we free up energy and awareness to appreciate what is already ours.

Not having everything figured out doesn’t mean you’re a “failure” or “unattractive.”

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the reminder I type more often than I have reason into my notes app. The notion that not having your life figured out (especially straight out of college) equates to failing, and in turn, not being “attractive,” has been hammered into our brains since childhood. If career success is associated with happiness, unemployment is associated with something lesser. This isn’t me talking. This is what I have been told is true by people and posts and movies that we interpret as a reflection of reality.

If someone were to ask me at this exact moment what I was doing for a living, I couldn’t confidently give them my answer.

I am a budding freelancer and a job appli-er. Yes, that is a newly coined term.

In my response, I highly doubt the person on the receiving end would react in the same way that they would with, “I just got hired at ‘Company That Sounds Really Prestigious’ and I move to the city next month to start.” Then again, is this line of thought a direct result of how I personally view what’s successful and what isn’t? What’s attractive and what isn’t?

Whatever the case may be, work is work and there is something acutely profound to be said about tireless effort — even if a paycheck or a title doesn’t reflect such. And after all, this is just one aspect of our lives. We have more corners to fill than just the career bit.

Point blank: If you were to only be your work and actively push the title of your job (however rightfully earned and deserved and in no way, shape, or form am I encouraging you to shrink yourself or your accomplishments but instead adjust how much of that you assume as your whole identity) to take up space as your main point of conversation, your party trick, your Instagram bio…where is the room for the rest of you?

No one talks about the success stories before they’re success stories.

The idea is that we wouldn’t talk about them, care about them, or even know about them if there wasn’t some conspicuous moment of, “They have made it.” After all, isn’t that what a success story is? A story of…success?

So when the trek is just beginning, and we can’t even fathom what the end of the tunnel looks like, and the wheels are turning but we’re hardly moving, what propels us to continue? And would anyone care to watch a tale of non-guaranteed accomplishment just as we’re in the thick of it? This is a time of jumping, and jumping blind.

We ought to give more credit to the people in the middle. The ones who are trying and being rejected to the tenth power, who defy all logic and reason (post-rejection, for example, would surely warrant a hiatus from any upcoming venture) by choosing to get back on their feet and keep seeking.

This is the stuff of good stories, stories that we take with us wherever we go. Admittedly, it’s a million times more satisfying this way. If we didn’t struggle, the reward — without question — wouldn’t taste as fulfilling as it would have when we feared we would never meet it. Out of scarcity, gratitude is bred, and when we are grateful, the small things are magic. Now go imagine the colossal things.

Don’t allow the expectations of others to affect your decisions.

Different people have different expectations of us. Whether intentionally or not, we voluntarily step into the roles that A. We have been conditioned to believe by the words and actions of others are solely ours, and/or B. We believe others write us off as and therefore label us as without explicitly saying so.

It could very well be that we create the roles for ourselves using the attitudes of other people. If someone tells us we’re _______ and that happens to align with a slight inclination we previously had about our personalities and the way in which we are perceived, we ultimately take it as confirmation. Their opinion plus our opinion equals objective truth. And we make good on our promise to live up to what our minds and those of our circle have told us we are.

The funny girl. The shy guy. The extrovert. The creative. The nurturer. The brain.

In a way, the branding of our essence means we have to make one less decision in the realm of who we’re going to be. The grueling part is taken care of, and look! Here’s my defining trait and everything else is secondary! And if I deviate, then I won’t actually recognize myself because this is who I’ve been told I am since I was a kid!

But our multifacetedness and ever-evolving selves can’t be packaged in a neat box with a neat label — even if that subsequently results in the inconvenience and disappointment of other people who maintain that they can forge us as two-dimensional in their narration of our lives via a channel of presumed control.

Change and the prerogative to change are requisite to a life that is 100% authentic in its makeup. No additives. No artificial sweeteners that taste like sugar but are definitely not sugar. Just you and your pivots and stabilities all working in tandem to eventually shake the hand of your most uninhibited, bona fide self.

Just because you refuse to take daily trips down memory lane doesn’t mean that time isn’t a part of you.

I think we hold onto the feelings of the past because maybe, it’s all we have left. Photobooth strips and letter-filled shoeboxes and sacred memories we never showed another soul. It’s all we have to remind us of a time when we felt good and happy and alive.

So we stay reminiscing, we keep our necks turned. Sometimes, we even stay hurt because holding on and feeling anything is better than letting go and feeling indifferent. One foot in, one foot out. We say we’re over it but we’re not. Even hanging on by a thread counts. This one’s a slippery slope.

It did really happen. That person and those people and that period of your life brought you something. And just because you make the executive decision to quit memorializing and replaying the synopsis in your head (disaster of an ending or not) out of an effort to pinpoint that [unattainable] moment of resolution or comfort, doesn’t mean you are resigning the past to Siberia. You are instead recognizing what was without the help of rose-colored glasses, remembering with either gratitude or enlightenment, and weightlessly striding towards expectant peaks.

For all the other shoeboxes.