| It's a Wednesday afternoon in the office and I ask my manager if I can go home to sleep.
"I think it's a stomach bug", I say.
"It's all right, I think we're all in a funk," she replies.
But it really is a stomach bug.
Tomayto, tomahto. I came home and had some potato chips for dinner. To calm the stomach bug. I then curled into a ball in bed and alternatively napped and finished reading, "One Day" by David Nicholls, a romcommy book, but legitimately gratifying. I think a review had put it well: "A summer read for people who despise the idea of summer reads." I had finished reading with some trepidation; Nicholls' depiction of early and mid-20s life was so accurate, that I was quite nauseous at the idea of what my 30s might look like. It doesn't seem so bad. I've been thinking a lot lately (although I suppose, always) about what I want my life to look like. I've been out of college for 3 years now. I have never imagined that this is what I would be doing right now. My life is the epitome of unglamorous. I work in a virtually entry-level position, staring at Excel all day. I have literally had dreams about Excel, have literally woken in the middle of the night because, while I was sleeping, I'd figured out the most efficient way to organize a database. I study mundane, everyday things: your toothpaste, your laundry detergent, what the 8% of US households not buying toilet paper is doing. I live in Kentucky. I have become friends with people who say that I am the first (and only) Asian person they have regularly interacted with. There is no public transport. This is due, in part, by lack of places worth being transported to, but also due to a lack of people who are willing to leave their homes and the corner burger joint. The clubs are an atrocity. There's a lot left to be desired in terms of culture. A strange thought though: I like my life here. A friend recently moved to NYC, and I'm startled to realize that I don't think I could move there anymore. First, I have too much crap. A fully furnished two-story apartment's worth of crap. I cannot imagine having roommates, having people muck through my things. I cannot imagine coming home on a Friday night and finding out that we're throwing a party. Or trying to read on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and hearing my roomie's offensively pop music filter through the walls. I cannot imagine not having a sewing corner and a yoga strip and a place to draw pictures, and several nooks all designed for optimal book reading/napping in the sun. I am too set in my ways for that shit now. My birthday was last weekend, and at the very last moment, I decided that I wanted to celebrate. I was worried that no one would show up with such late notice, and walked into the bar with a certain amount of panic. There were over 30 people there. And they followed me around on a bar hop of my choosing, because as much as the clubs suck here, there a few bars that I absolutely adore, with odd little bartenders that make me drinks out of fruit they grow in their gardens. There has been much published in the media about the generation of college grads who can't find jobs: ivy leaguers living in their parents' basements, working as dockhands. I was supposed to graduate in the class of '09. Instead, I graduated in '08 and found an analyst job despite my English Lit major. And though I didn't appreciate it at the time, now, watching many of my classmates struggle with their finances and the job market, I realize how lucky I am. I sacrificed my chance at something glamorous right out of college, and live this dreadfully boring life in Cincinnati, but am a few rungs up into a career. I get massages and manicures and go out to eat without concern. I went out shopping tonight, and bought myself some new nail polish, bubble bath, diet coke, and a set of old-fashioned pyjamas that I fully intend on wearing with jeans to work. What would it be like, do you think, to grow into the bourgeois middle aged middle class of the Midwest. Would that be so bad? What if, instead of always plotting my escape from Cincinnati, I just sit back and enjoy it. What if, instead of always dating the best looking guy or the guy with the most interesting background (investment banker, distiller, foreign, magician, too young, too old...) what if...I dated that balding bookseller that reads comic books, but is big and strong and openly finds me charming? Or maybe, the next time the guy at the gym who HAS NEVER HEARD OF A DUMPLING asks me if I want to watch him play basketball, I don't respond with, "Why would I want to do that?" Or how about even tonight, as I was walking out of the grocery store, and I heard the guy behind me whistling--not wolf-whistling, but doing that thing that guys sometimes do when they want to attract attention to themselves without freaking a paranoid girl out: they whistle a pleasant tune. I knew who he was; I've met him before. I was playing pretend and he was whistling my bluff. What if I had turned around and reintroduced myself, given him a chance, overlooked the false eye, mullet hair, and atrociously, not ironically, poor-fitting shorts? Is it still settling if I choose this instead? Is this a legitimate choice? Do you know, my college boyfriend turned THIRTY this year? It just occurred to me while I was in the grocery store. What is he even doing with his life? I am now the age he was when we first met, and I understand him so much better now, how he was afraid to stay in Ohio, how he wanted to do something "cool", why he was so insecure. He's still in the area, I think. Maybe he also found something wonderful about his life. Where did I want to be at 24? I wanted to be somewhere in Europe, writing, acting, enjoying myself. I wanted to live a glamorous life, one that others would be envious of. Who knew that I could stay so close to home, and still be this fulfilled. I wish I had known, growing up, that lives don't have to be exciting to be big, that sometimes the most mundane things could be the most meaningful. I imagined my mid-20s to be filled with romantic intrigue, to be a chance for me to discover my true career intent, to fulfill my ideal of what it means to be an adult. That doesn't have to change. Here goes. Happy September  |
