To The Next 365 Days

Encourage others as much as you can as long as you can.

It's funny.
No, it really is.
The more graduations I have (because dual degree, not just for numbers sake), the more I feel like this is all pretend.

As a dancer, my graduation robes are the strangest costume.
I felt like Hermione Granger.
Like Hermione as a grape because I was in purple.
Or more like a giant stop sign that was confused and more like a caution light.

I am cautious.
I read the blog called That First Year.
It is the handbook of stories of those who are in the jungle, experiencing first hand what life is like after college.

Honestly, I have never even pictured myself after college.
As a creator and an artist, that is hilarious.

So here I am.
Making a bubble bath with some epsom salt before I move out.
I don't want to throw it away because for dancers, these pebbles are gold and the bath time with them is heaven.

I started riding the gym bike today because my hands and feet are scared.
They are terrified for the break they have with the marley floor.
It's like a long-distance relationship I knew was coming but never wanted.

I find myself asking what I want.
Versus, what do I need?
What do I seek to trash and what do I choose to treasure?

Often, I get agitated since I think I am too serious.
Even now as I sit fully clothed on the lid of my toilet with my laptop swaddled between my fingertips, I wonder if these emails to myself will go anywhere, what eyes will glaze their words, will these words waste away or become my source of comfort?

I don't think anyone can predict it.
If they can, I don't want to know.

All I know is that I have heard this season will be hard.
I think anything worthwhile always is.
It's the grace of the Lord that we are here to experience this, and do so deeply.

Trying to start a tradition is curious.
I wonder if I'll keep writing.
I wonder how I'll keep writing and what context my words will reveal themselves like magicians, will I volunteer to saw myself in two with them or to figure out soon enough what my ace of spades is—my must haves and my aspirations.

I'm a dreamer.
More than a dreamer though I am a connector.
I love to listen.
I love stories, immersing myself in them like a bath, I sit in solitude chewing on their rough sentences to plaster them like wallpaper in my mind, easy to study on the regular.

I'm a reader and a speaker.
I'm still a student but no longer here, in Greenville.
Rather, world, I am your new pupil.

Teach me.
That first year, you will be brutal.
I don't know how, and I am extremely intimidated by you.

Yet, cheers to the next 365 days.
To love.
To faith.
To grace.
To wisdom.
To forgiveness.
To laughter.
To the sweet smell of warm chocolate.
To mercy.
To peace.
To joy.

Yes, yes, yes.
Cheers to counting these trials and triumphs as joy.

Here we go.
I don't know really how to sign off, but I am excited.

And that, that is absolutely terrifying.

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I've Been Writing: Lessons from Self-Publishing

“I’VE BEEN WRITING.”

I told a close friend this right as our Christmas break started. I had spent the last few days in coffee shops recuperating from the fall semester. And by “recuperating,” I mean hours on end were spent sipping coffee and writing poetry. My goal for the break was to be more disciplined in writing poems—stretch my poems in length, depth, symbolism, imagery... and stretch myself in the process.

This wasn’t a decision on a whim, though. (I mean, who just decides to dedicate their Christmas break to being disciplined in poetry?)

As I was finishing the semester, I got an email saying five poems I submitted to a print magazine had all been rejected.

A Millennial Learning From Gen Z

Miraculously, and I do not say that lightly, I was hired at my dream school as an adjunct professor.

Up until August of 2020, I had little to no interaction to the generation monikered Gen Z.

I let a few years lapse between undergrad and grad school and managed to only have night classes. Like I do with anyone of any age, I don’t judge them based off of assumptions and stereotypes.

That is until the night before I began teaching.

I couldn’t sleep as worries pummeled me: Did my outfit portray I’m cool but also professional? Do they even say “cool”? Will they listen to me? Will my examples relate?

To The In Between

I am writing to inform you that I have decided to accept your offer to stay here for a to-be-determined amount of time. I’ve decided to occupy the space that you’ve provided me with here because it seems I have no other choice. I’ve tried my hardest to get out of this space, to crawl and dive and roll my way out of this weird and uncomfortable living situation. This is worse than any bad roommate I’ve ever had, for the record. I’ve tried to avoid giving people this address when they ask “what are you doing with your life?” or “where are you now?” because I quite honestly haven’t bothered to memorize it either. Every time I think I’m moving out and I’ve convinced myself this is it, I fall right back on my ass and am reminded, abruptly (and painfully if I must say so myself), that it is not my time.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 4 Tips to Overcome Post-Grad Regret

Just as you can imagine, college graduation season is packed with all the emotions. You feel relief, excitement, stress and pride. The emotion most people don’t associate with graduation and what I didn’t expect to feel, though, is regret.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Mountaintop Moments

Removed from the college bubble and re-planted in a new life, the field is wiped clean again. I have to again make a real, conscious decision about where I fit in and how I stack up. There seem to be metrics in place for who’s “winning” post-grad—high-power job? committed relationship? best apartment? coolest city?—but there’s no prize. New York is enormous, and social media is a daily tidal wave, and there have been days when I feel so small.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: A Letter to the Recent Grad

I took graduating really hard. Like, really hard. I left school having absolutely nothing figured out with absolutely no answers, and spent most of the summer crying to my parents and denying the fact that I could no longer get dollar drinks at the bar (one of the rudest awakenings about post-grad life…). I felt lost without my friends, without the walls of UNH that protected us all so neatly, and without my identity as a student.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: What to Expect When You're Expecting (to Graduate), Part I

It’s 7 pm. The white Christmas lights that are lined with postcards from my semester abroad and the ones that are wrapped around my headboard are twinkling against their respective walls. There are two kittens curled up on top of each other at the foot of my bed and I have set up camp in the chair that barricades me into my “reading corner.” I just finished a short story I was assigned in creative writing that dug its claws deep down into my writer’s soul and as I type a Bath and Body Works candle spits fumes of vanilla marshmallow out into the air.

I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave.

Make An Effort: 5 Things I Learned About Keeping Friendships After College

About a year ago, halfway through my senior year, one of my friends who had just graduated said, “Maintaining friendships in post grad life is hard, but it’s all about making an effort.”

I believed this at the time but I was still in denial that I wouldn’t be as close to my best friends as I was in college. How could everything change so quickly? Would all of the effort we had put into these friendships these past four years just go to waste?

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Learning to Be

The amount that I miss college has grown vast and visceral these days. The new school year started on the same day that I started my job, and it felt wrong to be running to catch the subway when I should have been running to class. I don’t have my friends around to ground me, to remind me of our four-year and forever home. I used to find God at nighttime Mass, on service trips, in philosophy discussions; without those elements at my fingertips, I’m restless. My nostalgia is beyond what can be prettified by an Instagram filter; it’s heavy, and lonely, and I have felt inexplicably and irrationally isolated in bearing its weight.

Dreams, Graduation, RelationshipsKristalyn GillJuly 9, 2017FeaturedComment

To The Next 365 Days

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