Keepin' It Real

Being a twenty-something post-college graduate trying to find your niche in the world blows. It super sucks. You have all this grand education and are sold the whole “you can do anything you want to” bit and suddenly- BAM- here’s 70 grand in loans and no job to pay them off with. Oh and by the way, you can’t do anything you want to. Responsibility, reality, and the weighing of risk and reward will now govern your life. Oh, and that thing you thought you were going to do for the rest of your life- now you’re not so sure. Wait, wait, one more thing- you’re also going to be plagued by this restless, maybe naïve, desire to travel the world and abandon all conformity- break all the rules and decide against the conformist notion of “career.” Oh wait, everyone wants that- who’s conforming now? You’re going to think you can do what you want, work any number of jobs you want, and be satisfied living some kind of artful nomadic life. Somehow that justifies the feelings of inadequacy- the inabilities you feel about finding a structured and stable job. As if watching others covet the way you travel with hopeless abandon will negate the shame of moving back in with your parents. You’re not going to find an awesome job in a brewery that lets you drink beer on your lunch break. You’re not going to score an internship that pays you to travel the world for free. You aren’t going to find Grey’s Anatomy love in a storage closet with a wildly attractive, perfect doctor. And you’re not going to ‘find yourself’ on a soul-searching road trip across the US. Being 20 something is a pain in the ass and yet somehow it is the most fun I’ve ever had. (Minus the loans…I’d rather tell a bunch of adorable 4 year olds Santa is lie than pay those bitches off.)