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

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!

Part I: At the Crossroads of Comfort and Coming Alive

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 feels like home. In all the comfort a powder blue vintage desk and two purring kittens can provide, this feels like home. A sense of rest that had previously been sacrificed in the name of classes and an internship and figuring out what I’m going to do after I graduate in December comes to greet me like an old friend. I want to stay in this room and read Oscar Wilde and drink tea and lock away all my post-graduation anxiety in a bulletproof, high-security vault somewhere in the Swiss Alps. I want to cover my ears, shut my eyes and chant, “I’m not listening, I’m not listening, I’m not listening!” as the fear of the unknown New Year tethers itself to my every other thought. I want some peace and, at this moment, I’m willing to sacrifice reality to get it.

Two months ago I thought I was going to stay in Nashville and pursue songwriting after my December graduation date. One month and 29 days ago God asked me to let go of that plan. Since then, all the doors that have opened up as possibilities have been far away—as in different countries—from the city I always assumed would be home. I have been soaking in the freedom of getting to dream of new possibilities, but it is also daunting to imagine myself in Greece or British Columbia or South Sudan and what that would mean for my sense of security. Could I really be called away from a life filled with twinkling Christmas lights and holiday-scented candles?

I wish I didn’t have to admit that I like comfort. As millennials we romanticize the idea of adventure and “living authentically” without ever addressing the reality that it is our human nature to crave consistency. I have backpacked by myself in Ireland and slept on the floor of the Serengeti and dreamed about writing stories in refugee camps, but I like comfort too. I have found that they are not mutually exclusive and my desire for the familiar does not negate my desire for adventure. They, however, refuse to coexist, and I have to choose which foundation is worth building my newly-founded adult life on. Both desires require the sacrifice of the other, and I know in my heart of hearts that there is only one sacrifice worth making.

I am reminded of a time ten months ago when I started running as a nearly 200 pound 5’3” female. The first month of training was excruciating. I was out of breath after two minutes of 12-minute-a-mile jogging and there was embarrassingly little muscle in my legs to support me so I constantly had swollen ankles and aching knees. I wanted to quit more than anything. I was still living and breathing in my comfortable, unhealthy state so why was I subjecting myself to such torture?

I had a decision to make: would I let the pain, the very well-intentioned growing pain, keep me from the life I was made for or would I trudge into the discomfort, trusting that the risk far outweighed half-hearted stability? I remember repeating to myself over and over again, while running up hills and rounding the last half-mile of my first 5K, that there is no easy way out for the things in life that are truly worth having.

Sometimes the looming inevitability of post-graduation feels like being the overweight girl learning to run again. There is no easy way out—no magic diet pill that will zap away all the unwanted problem areas of adulthood, no fad juice cleanse that will clear your system of prodding questions of purpose—there is just a decision you and I have to make. Will we let our lives be defined by our desire for comfort or our desire for meaning and adventure? Will we put down our control in anticipation that our hands will be filled with a much greater treasure? Will I trust that giving up a queen-sized bed in a city I have tied my heart and soul to is a small price to pay to really come alive in who I was made to be? The world does not need more people in pursuit of comfort and high-salaried jobs; the world needs more people who feel a sense of responsibility to carry their dreams and passions with courage.

The inward questions for my own heart in this season of life called early twenties echo one that Mary Oliver asks in her poem “The Summer Day”—

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

[This post was originally published on October 15, 2017.]

FREE PRINT

Do you like free things? Us too. How about this free print of a dope Harry Potter quote in 3 font options? Enter your email below to receive your free Harry Potter print.

Featured

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Making Time for Yourself

I’ve allowed myself to fall into this routine that is toxic to my personal productivity. And I’m the type of person who cannot be fully satisfied from just work, I need to see advancements in my personal life to feel a real sense of accomplishment. But lately, I’ve spent every free moment thinking of all the things I need to do and dreaming up all the things I want to do that I don’t leave myself enough time to actually do them.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Therapy for the Skeptic

“I’m going to therapy.” When that statement was first true for me, the sentence felt slippery, like I couldn’t quite wrap my hands around it, like trying to hold one of those weird liquid-filled sparkly gel blobs we played with as kids (really, what were those?). Or like trying to roll those Spanish “r”s or pronounce those deep-throated “e”s like the French do—it sounded unnatural when I tried to say it. So instead, I said “I’m going to see Sarah” or “I have an appointment” or, mostly, I just don’t say anything at all, keeping it tucked away in my I’d-rather-not-say collection.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: The End of 23

Twenty-three has been the hardest year of my life, straight up. And I say that with zero melodrama and with the common sense that there will be years ahead that are worse and years ahead that are better. I know many of you can relate. Maybe this is just our early twenties, or maybe this is just life—this pendulum swinging between the dark and light, wandering and arriving, wondering and knowing, grief and joy.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: How to Travel on a Post-Grad Budget, Part 2

As I said in my previous post—How to Travel on a Post-Grad Budget, Part 1—it is 180,000% possible to travel on a post-grad budget, and I will continue to defend this statement in a manner that is borderline aggressive.

Here are 4 more tips to help you save while traveling.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: How to Travel on a Post-Grad Budget, Part 1

It is 180,000% possible to travel on a post-grad budget, and I will defend this statement in a manner that is borderline aggressive.

The world wasn’t meant to be admired from a stock desktop wallpaper; it was meant to be experienced. This is another statement that I will defend in a manner that is borderline aggressive.

But traveling isn’t always easy on entry-level wages. Here’s how to see the world without breaking the bank.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: The Road Paved with Disappointment

You should just drive across the country,” she said lightheartedly, and laughter ensued. Drive across the country, what an absurd idea. But then the joke got taken one step too far and all of a sudden we were plotting about who would pay my rent for a month and where I could stop to stay the night in Oklahoma and Arizona and California. Suddenly, I was calling my parents and asking if I would still be allowed to come home for Christmas if I made a rather (arguably) reckless decision and drove my tired, thirteen-year-old car across the country. (It took some negotiation but I am, indeed, still allowed to come home.) We sat in a coffee shop for an hour and hammered out the plan and concluded that there really wouldn’t be one, that sometimes you have to take a leap, whether or not it looks like a promising landing, and whether or not people are going to speculate about where your mind might have run off to.

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: When You Want to Do Everything

In all seriousness, though, I felt like I had transported right back to where I was my senior year, caught in the in-between of trying to hold on so tightly to those last few months of my life as a student, and looking so forward to venturing out of it. But it brought back that old familiar, restless feeling—the same feeling I had when I got back from London, and when I first moved here—of wanting so many things and trying to figure out a way to make them all coexist.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Finding the Happiest Hour

Between stressing for Walter White’s father-of-the-year-campaign and my ambiguous job future, the happy hours continued. I have the utmost appreciation for these friends that took me out of my own darkness and enjoyed a beer or two. We treasured our three dollar drinks, our pita and chips, our half off cocktails, our half off wines, our chances to escape the pressures of “do you have a job yet?” and the looming student loan emails. The bitter hops of a summer ale washed away our problems, reminding us that if Emily Blunt and John Krasinksi found each other, we too can find jobs and futures that welcome us wholeheartedly.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: It's Okay That People Leave

It’s okay that people leave—I think that’s something we rarely hear anymore. Our emphasis so often heads toward the dramatic. Big fights, long-distance forgetfulness, regrets and bitterness over something that used to fill you with so much sweetness. But then there are the people who just left, or maybe you left them. Your lives took you in two different directions and you drifted.

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.

Graduation, Dreams, CareerChelsey SatterleeApril 24, 2018Featured, From the ArchivesComment

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

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!

Part I: At the Crossroads of Comfort and Coming Alive

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

FREE PRINT

magazine Blog

Contact SUBMIT