Posts in Dreams
Finding Peace Amidst Changes
Finding Peace Amidst Changes

Some days are harder than others in this post-grad world. Some days I think to myself, “I can and I will do this,” and other days I think about taking some time off from reality and traveling, maybe becoming a flight attendant for a while so I can see new places and still make money doing so.

Then I remember the more time I take off from doing what I want to be doing, the less likely I'm going to land the dream job.

So no, I’m not at peace with where I am.

I'm living at home, I'm beyond broke, I am single for the first time in six years, I don't like working five different jobs that I don't feel challenged at, and I just don't know what to do about it. I apply for jobs constantly, follow up and still get rejection emails and phone calls.

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Career, DreamsJackie MundryComment
The Road Paved with Disappointment
The Road Paved with Disappointment

About a month ago, I was driving to downtown Franklin, Tennessee with a friend and spilling my fearful, panicking guts from the passenger’s seat. I had just received news that I would not be getting a job I had spent three interviews preparing to accept. I was rundown and disappointed, feeling lost in the jungle of post-graduation.

“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.

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Dreams, Life, CareerChelsey SatterleeFeatured, Archive 16Comment
Now & Then: Advice to Your Past and Future Self
Now & Then: Advice to Your Past and Future Self

Because I’m still not over the fact that a new year has already fallen upon us (and I’m also not over the fact that it’s been almost a year since we graduated… NO),  I still can’t help but reflect on 2015 out of the pure shock that it’s behind us now. What a major year this was for me: I (somehow) graduated college, moved into an apartment, got a big-girl job and experienced infinite laughs, loves, let-downs and lessons. So like every other year before this one, I found myself mentally making a list of all of the things I wanted to change about myself after the ball dropped. Past resolutions include eating healthier, exercising more, volunteering more, everything you've already heard before and everything I never actually do, etc.

But then I started wondering; if I could go back, to 2015 or 2014 or 2011 or 2006, what would I tell myself then?

In the end, would I have done it any different?

So I decided to put my senior-year newspaper class experience to the test and use my hard-hitting journalism skills (just pretend…) to ask the same question to those around me: What would you tell your past self?

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Life, Dreams, GraduationAlyssa VottoFeaturedComment
Make Believe
Make Believe

I was recently babysitting a 7 year-old girl and her two older brothers. While her brothers played video games (which in my tomboy heart I secretly wanted to play instead), we played everything from doll house, hide-and-seek to beauty salon.

I fondly remember all throughout my childhood the majority of playing I did by myself and with my friends was playing make-believe. We would play house, doctor’s office and my personal favorite: school. The world of make-believe as a kid is a magical place with no ceilings or walls to stop you. You can literally be whatever you want to be with no limits to your imagination.

Now my make-believe skills were a touch rusty as Danielle and I played; I found myself having a hard time seeing all the things that she was seeing. She would be adding to the story and I was left fumbling with my words just trying to keep up with her. “When did this happen…?” I wondered. I used to be able to play make-believe with the best of ‘em. No storyline was too unbelievable for me. Yet here I was wondering why the dragon was in the garage or why the fairies would have their own pets.

I’d like to call this my Peter Pan moment. Without even noticing it, I had grown up, never to return to Neverland. My imagination is a more cynical, rational, shriveled up version of what it once was. In Polar Express, on Christmas morning when the parents jingle the bell Santa gave the little boy and can’t hear a sound at all… that is me! When did I stop believing in “childish things"?

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Dreams, CareerAlyssa RichardsonComment
We Are Not Trained to Stand Still
We Are Not Trained to Stand Still

If 17 was one of my favorite years so far, 22 was its sorrowful counterpart. That year was a year of distance for me, distance between who I was and who I wanted to be. It was the year I moved 3,000 miles for love, leaving behind nearly every place and person I ever knew. I went into this year with a bachelor’s degree and no plan other than taking six months off from even thinking about what my next step should be.

Even though I needed that time, it was the year my life stood still.

In retrospect, I know things happened during that year. I know the world didn’t stop. But it sure felt like it did. Days blended together, weeks stretched out into months, and eventually the year came to an end. 

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Dreams, Life, CareerNicole BoozFeaturedComment
It's Okay
It's Okay

I’ve cried more in the past few months than I probably ever have in my entire life, throughout this huge blur of confusion and aimless direction and anxiety. And although I was extremely fortunate to find a job soon after we graduated, it was far from what I wanted to be doing in the long run. It was a temp position, and that’s all I ever wanted it to be: temporary.

I have this tendency to be self-doubtful, to over-analyze every little thing to every little core, pick it apart, over-analyze it some more. And I have no idea why. So from when I first sat down at my desk up until now, I constantly apologized for all of the countless (countless…) mistakes I made, the appointments that I booked incorrectly, the money I added wrong; the list goes on.

“I’m sorry,” I would shriek. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

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Dreams, Career, LifeAlyssa VottoFeatured, Archive 16Comment
Don't Lose Your Dinosaur: When Dreams Change
Don't Lose Your Dinosaur: When Dreams Change

When I was 14, I was more ambitious than I am now at 23. I had a plan of carefully laid out goals and nothing could stop me. I made my list having little to no knowledge of how these dreams could actually take shape, and it didn’t matter. I was still young enough to retain that simple notion that I was capable of anything.

It was simple: When I graduated high school, I was going to Oxford. I was going to be heralded as a genius young writer, graduate with honors, become financially stable immediately (potentially the most outrageous of these goals) and find the person of my dreams, who coincidentally would also be financially stable.

I don’t know what tuition is over at good old Oxford, for an international student no less, but my 23 year-old self sincerely thanks my parents for compromising on college choices with me. I went to school still in state, just five hours away. No, I didn’t even apply to Oxford. I couldn’t even bring myself to write a good enough essay just for the honors program for my public state college. No, I haven’t achieved any of those other things on my proposed list of post-undergrad goals.

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DreamsAnna SpleanFeaturedComment
When it's the New Year and Everything is Different
When it's the New Year and Everything is Different

As I get older I realize that each new year is like a game of Russian roulette. The odds are good that everything will be okay, that they year will go well; after all, I’m smart, intrepid and a hard-worker. Things should be fine.

But then there are those years when everything goes rogue. The bullet years. 2015 was a bit of a bullet year for me. But the thing about the bullet years is that they injure you, but you heal, you grow and you change. And at the end of it all, nothing is the same.

On New Year’s Eve last year I was talked into spending way too much money to watch a couple of guys play dueling pianos. It was a night of hilarity and champagne. Fall of 2014 had been one of the worst patches of my life, so when the clock struck midnight in downtown Fort Worth and all of the drunk people around me started singing "Auld Lang Syne," I started to sob. Not a lot. Just a little. Mostly because I was bone tired, but also because "Auld Lang Syne" is just about the saddest song for what’s supposed to be a happy occasion. Also because I hadn’t spoken to my best friends in a while. All lived in Houston. One was married, one was engaged and one had convinced me to spend way too much money to watch of couple of guys play dueling pianos. She’s a champ, though. She drank an entire bottle of champagne “because you’re designated driver Rachel, I’m doing you a favor.”

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Life, DreamsRachel MallisonFeatured, ArchiveComment
Just Trust It
Just Trust It

Coming home from a foreign country is a weird thing, man. You’re picked up by an airplane some 6,000 miles away, and by the time you wake up from a Nyquil coma everyone speaks your language and you can once again get a pumpkin spice latte off the Starbucks menu. Walking through customs at the Miami airport was akin to peeing in swimming pools as a child – comfortable, warm, a feeling of joy quite literally spreading around me. There were Christmas carols playing and decorated trees spotting the lobby, and hearing the words to “God Bless America” played over the loud speakers moved me to tears.

Home is a beautiful thing.

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Dreams, Travel, Life, RelationshipsKelsey WorshamFeaturedComment
So This is the New Year
So This is the New Year

“...and I don’t feel any different.”

As 2015 comes to a close, so does my first year after college. And while I don’t feel any different, I don’t feel the same as when I walked the stage last year either.

Back then, I thought I’d be writing this post with my whole life figured out. A perfectly stenciled career plan in place. Trips around the world and days of jet lag under my belt. Well on my way to finding Mr. Right.

I am here to tell you that one year later, I have achieved exactly none of these things. And that’s fine.

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Dreams, LifeKendall CherryFeaturedComment
So This is the Desert, Then, Part II
So This is the Desert, Then, Part II

It’s been a year. I think that’s the best way to summarize my first year after college, because the statement “it’s been a year” is wide enough in ambiguity yet concise enough in simplicity to accommodate both the good and bad. So, yeah, it’s been a year.

Confession: This year, I had become selfish. I mean, let’s be real, I’ve always been selfish (‘Me? Selfish? But I’m perfect!’ argues my ego), but this year I was especially so.

It was always about me. But not in an openly obvious way, as though I consciously made the effort to view myself as the center of the universe. It was just the average “me, me, me” attitude that we so often perpetuate, ya know? Just continually thinking about the things common to someone who has recently graduated: What is my dream job? Where do I want to live? How can I find happiness?

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Life, Dreams, RelationshipsAlly WillisFeatured, ArchiveComment
What to Expect When You're Expecting (to Graduate), Part II
What to Expect When You're Expecting (to Graduate), Part II

In the first post I wrote for this series I talked about not wanting to leave Nashville after I graduated at the end of this semester. I talked about my fear of losing comfort and the home that I have built in a city I didn’t have to be convinced into adoring. I even emphasized the point by writing three times in italics—I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave. When I went back to read this post five minutes ago, I almost laughed out loud into my mocha.

Since I wrote that post I have decided to stay in Nashville and the voice of fear that screamed loud about not wanting to leave screams even louder about not wanting to stay.

I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to stay.

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Dreams, Life, Graduation, CareerChelsey SatterleeFeatured, ArchiveComment
Bloom Where You Are Planted
Bloom Where You Are Planted

While there were bumps in the road (like having the flu on day 2 or traveling 12 hours from Sheffield to Edinburgh and ending up on a bus because all northbound trains were canceled due to flooding) we really did have a great time and saw some breathtaking “once in a lifetime” sights.  

But this trip had a different taste. I’ve traveled before and never felt like I was far away from home. I’ve always wanted to keep exploring, keep traveling and just keep moving. The flight home is usually a sad one. Once I step on that plane it usually means back to reality and a routine. 

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Travel, Life, DreamsJuliette KibodeauxFeaturedComment
One Year Later: A Reflection
One Year Later: A Reflection

It’s been a year since That First Year was launched. 365 days. And in those 365 days, more than 30 people (33, to be exact!) have contributed 131 posts to this li’l blog; more than 30 people have willingly put figurative pen to figurative paper to write about just how messy and confusing, yet oh-so-beautiful that first year after college can be. We’ve had posts covering the gamut of topics: from life to love to friends to travel to dreams to some of our favorite things.

“These posts are getting too relatable now.”

Someone said this about a post recently and I wanted to give ‘em a big ‘ole hug through the computer because that’s exactly what I was hoping this blog would be: a place where people can relate to the stories this community has shared. 

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Travel, Style, Money, Life, Health, Graduation, Dreams, Career, RelationshipsAlly WillisFeaturedComment
365 Days of Being My Own Worst Critic
365 Days of Being My Own Worst Critic

It’s been almost a year to the day that I walked across that stage, shook hands with a bunch of university higher ups, followed by six to eight weeks of waiting for that thick, expensive piece of paper proving I did actually earn a degree; it wasn’t all some strange, sleep deprivation dream.

“So what are you doing now?” they ask innocently, not understanding the onslaught of fear and frustration that question brings with it.

I have the same job I had before I graduated college, and while it doesn’t leave me satisfied career wise, it does pay those bills. So I’ve spent my first year outside academia learning to be okay with that. For now. It’s been no simple task, especially when I notoriously push myself too hard to ridiculous goals that I know are out of reach at the moment, but yet I expect them of myself anyway. I came out of college as the worst kind of critic: a perfectionist.

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Career, DreamsAnna SpleanFeaturedComment