Feb 6

Feb 6 FROM THE ARCHIVES: If Not Now, When?

We've published hundreds of stories from 100+ writers in the last three years, so we're highlighting some of these timeless posts in our new From the Archives series. Enjoy!

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag… or the embodiment of a walking cliché? This is a humbling realization I think we all probably come to accept at one time or another in our twenties.

An older cousin—whose input I actually warrant and respect—made a comment a few weeks back as I tried to explain my vague-ass postgrad plans. The tone was definitely backhanded, but it wasn’t that accusatory.

“Okay, nice. Your generation sure does take its time.”

I instantly found myself on the defense and made light of the situation with one of those unsettled laugh-shrug things.

Yesterday I booked a flight to Dublin. This whole backpacking thing was turning into such a theory; I seriously needed to stop talking about it and just do it already. I found a bitchin’ round trip deal that will allow me three full weeks in Europe towards the end of the summer. For the most part, I will be alone. My mom does not know about any of this yet.

Upwards of eight minutes were spent hovering over the daunting COMPLETE PURCHASE button, questioning why I was even doing this in the first place.

“Be a man,” I told myself. I clicked. The page had expired. I started over. The ticket price had gone up 20 dollars. Those assholes. I rushed to type my payment information again and clicked the button.

A lot of my hesitation stemmed from those words my cousin had said. It’s not exactly a secret that our generation enjoys making grand travel plans as an excuse to avoid real responsibility. A lot of us are so hell-bent on prolonging youth and “finding ourselves” that we take limited accountability for things and choose to run off to Europe or Asia or wherever instead. No one wants to rush into the arms of a desk job. I think we can all agree that it’s only natural to feel aversion towards that.

I’m just not convinced that dickin’ around the south of France with a bottle of rosé is the key to discovering yourself, either. Someone tell the writers over at Elite Daily to stop encouraging this madness.

Yet here I am, with a measly part-time source of income and a nonrefundable plane ticket to Ireland. A walking cliché by all accounts. But if not now, when?

I don’t expect three weeks spent backpacking to answer all of life’s burning questions, nor do I expect to magically discover my true calling. But I do think it will offer a fresh perspective at the very least, and a fresh perspective might be exactly what those of us running off need.

[This post was originally published on June 11, 2015.]

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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: Today I Am On A Plane: The Move to New York City

One day ago I was in Long Lake, MN. My home for the past 22 years, the only home I've ever lived in, my safe haven.

Today I am on a plane.

I have realized there is a difference between dreaming your dreams and living them.

I have also realized how hard it is.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Redefining Failure and Moving Forward

It’s been six months since I graduated from university and if I’m perfectly candid, it’s been a rough ride. People keep telling me that it’s okay to not know what you’re doing at this stage in life. “You’re so young, take time to figure it out!”

I have been told some variation of that statement hundreds of times since April. As reassuring as it is to hear, I haven’t felt content with what I’m doing since I was in school. I miss writing every day. I miss being challenged, studying, learning new things and that fly-by-the-seat-of-my pants adrenaline rush I get anytime I’m working under a strict deadline.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: What the Hell is "The Dream" Anyways?

I will never forget the night leading up to graduation that I had lain in my apartment crying and texting my brother about not wanting to celebrate my accomplishment. I had been through interview after interview yet had nothing to show for it. I felt like a failure. My parents and I had both invested so much money in this dream of mine and here I was, two weeks from graduating college and only having a part time job paying barely over minimum wage to show for it.

Looking for Life

Our deserts will look different—a job loss that flattens you, credit card debt that seems endless, a family drama that has yet to resolve, a breakup that breaks you, an addiction that controls you, a depression or an anxiety that plagues you. Deserts can look so much like a place of despair.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: On Finding Your Calling

On the greyest of days, my decision to take the comfy corporate job felt like a step back in the career I never had; a red mark on my shiny post-graduate résumé, previously filled with all things English major-y. And it was in the moments of restlessness that I couldn’t help but wonder… Did I sell out? Did I give up on my dreams too fast? Was I wasting my talents? My forty thousand dollar education?

Was it all for nothing?

Imperfect, Not Failing

Typically, if I know something is going to be imperfect I will probably not do it. Or, the second something starts revealing its imperfections I dip out. Relationships, goals, Wednesday night yoga—if I am standing face to face with imperfection I will use it as an excuse to distance myself from whatever the thing is. Because if imperfection means failure, and failure means making a fool out of myself in front of the whole world that is obviously watching and judging my life (I’m looking at you, Yoga Wizard behind me at the 6pm Vinyasa class), I need to get out of Dodge before shame and the opinions of others get some pitch forks and angry-mob-style force me out.

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.

This Is What 25 Feels Like

I told a table of friends the other night that I haven’t yet had a crisis about turning 25. I am an ambiguous dreamer, not a future goal setter, so I’ve never had a picture in my mind of what 25 would look like. I didn’t necessarily think I would be married or having babies (Lord have mercy) or hitting certain career milestones by the time I hit my mid-twenties, so I didn’t feel like I was coming up short when I blew out my candles this past December.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: What You Should Know About Waiting

Over coffee one weekend, my friend poured out her thoughts in the vein of frustration with her first full-time gig after college. Her angst was stemming from the general discontent of routine and the initial feeling—3 weeks in—that her job was meaningless and seemingly dead-end.

As I listened, I felt the ping of familiarity with these sentiments—feeling discontent with the present and frustration of waiting for the future.

She asked me, “How long does it take for this to go away?”