After much delay, I've finally posted and will continue to regularly:
http://manhattaneater.wordpress.com/
Enjoy!
Also, if you're in the City and have a place you'd like to try out...let me know. (:
28 November 2009
The Roaring 20s
The 20s aren't meant to be easy - but that fact gets buried fairly often. Nestled somewhere between the trying years of adolescence and the feared complacency of routine that characterize the teens and the 30s, respectively, the 20s are supposed to be "the best years of your life." Old enough to drink, young enough not to care about mortgages and "real" responsibilities. Idealistic enough to believe, pragmatic enough to execute.
Tacking on that label, however, can mean that those who aren't yet out of college, and those who are too far removed from the 20s, soon forget just what a weird and tumultuous time it is. Gone is the security of familiarity, with friends and family scattered throughout the state, country, world. Gone is the dependability of routine, of knowing that even the worst circumstances will come to an end coinciding with the end of a semester or school year. And most importantly, gone is the degree of certainty that there is a "correct" next step to take moving toward the next phase of life.
Being in your 20s means that, ultimately, for the first time in a long time, you really have to evaluate what it is you want, how you're going to get it, and why you want it. Prior to this vast slate known as "the real world," everything in life was comparatively neat.
Everything could be traced back to expectations. After elementary school, you moved on to junior high and high school. You worked hard in high school with the knowledge that your standardized test scores (ick) and grades would promise you success in the form of a college acceptance letter. You spend four years (or more or less) in college trying to solidify your beliefs, your thoughts, your goals as a genuinely active member of society. You expect that this, and all the things you have learned in and out of classes in your 20-something years of life, will also guarantee some form of social success. You have, after all, paid an arm and a leg for it. And then...you graduate.
Everything from there on out has absolutely nothing and everything to do with expectations. With the exception of going to grad school (this is still being in a system, in a more managed chaos), college grads are then really hit in the face with the question they should have been answering all those 20-something years ago: What do I want to do in life?
Short of hanging out with friends and exchanging woes and ideas about what it is that makes us happy, we are no longer armed with the leisurely time to really question things. There are no more classroom lessons, scheduled vacations, or discussion sections that will prompt us to think in these terms. Life after college can become pretty draining, pretty monotonous, pretty quickly.
But questioning...it's just something that needs to be done, else we toil mindlessly and just kind of drift into our 30s. And this is why the 20s are so tricky. Because the truth is, once you're out of a system, everything becomes a juggling act.
It's like piecing together a puzzle. All your years leading up to your 20s involved forming the pieces by means of learning about your likes, dislikes, interests and talents. Your 20s become, then, the years where you start to gather the disparate pieces and try to make out a discernable shape. You see what pieces you can use, which ones you can't, which ones are misshapen, and where they all fit together. But perhaps most importantly, you can, after attempting to mold all these bits together, see what is missing.
Living through the 20s is difficult because without the expectation that there is a correct route to take or a right way to piece together the puzzle, there is so much uncertainty. Life has given you enough experience and "wisdom" to recognize that you don't have all the answers and that you can't force things into place. But because the 20s involves honing and building and connecting, it's often difficult to take a step back and see that big picture.
And the missing pieces? They'll always be in the last place you look.
Tacking on that label, however, can mean that those who aren't yet out of college, and those who are too far removed from the 20s, soon forget just what a weird and tumultuous time it is. Gone is the security of familiarity, with friends and family scattered throughout the state, country, world. Gone is the dependability of routine, of knowing that even the worst circumstances will come to an end coinciding with the end of a semester or school year. And most importantly, gone is the degree of certainty that there is a "correct" next step to take moving toward the next phase of life.
Being in your 20s means that, ultimately, for the first time in a long time, you really have to evaluate what it is you want, how you're going to get it, and why you want it. Prior to this vast slate known as "the real world," everything in life was comparatively neat.
Everything could be traced back to expectations. After elementary school, you moved on to junior high and high school. You worked hard in high school with the knowledge that your standardized test scores (ick) and grades would promise you success in the form of a college acceptance letter. You spend four years (or more or less) in college trying to solidify your beliefs, your thoughts, your goals as a genuinely active member of society. You expect that this, and all the things you have learned in and out of classes in your 20-something years of life, will also guarantee some form of social success. You have, after all, paid an arm and a leg for it. And then...you graduate.
Everything from there on out has absolutely nothing and everything to do with expectations. With the exception of going to grad school (this is still being in a system, in a more managed chaos), college grads are then really hit in the face with the question they should have been answering all those 20-something years ago: What do I want to do in life?
Short of hanging out with friends and exchanging woes and ideas about what it is that makes us happy, we are no longer armed with the leisurely time to really question things. There are no more classroom lessons, scheduled vacations, or discussion sections that will prompt us to think in these terms. Life after college can become pretty draining, pretty monotonous, pretty quickly.
But questioning...it's just something that needs to be done, else we toil mindlessly and just kind of drift into our 30s. And this is why the 20s are so tricky. Because the truth is, once you're out of a system, everything becomes a juggling act.
It's like piecing together a puzzle. All your years leading up to your 20s involved forming the pieces by means of learning about your likes, dislikes, interests and talents. Your 20s become, then, the years where you start to gather the disparate pieces and try to make out a discernable shape. You see what pieces you can use, which ones you can't, which ones are misshapen, and where they all fit together. But perhaps most importantly, you can, after attempting to mold all these bits together, see what is missing.
Living through the 20s is difficult because without the expectation that there is a correct route to take or a right way to piece together the puzzle, there is so much uncertainty. Life has given you enough experience and "wisdom" to recognize that you don't have all the answers and that you can't force things into place. But because the 20s involves honing and building and connecting, it's often difficult to take a step back and see that big picture.
And the missing pieces? They'll always be in the last place you look.
24 November 2009
19 November 2009
18 November 2009
15 November 2009
14 November 2009
10 November 2009
08 November 2009
03 November 2009
Thoughts, unfiltered.
I woke up this morning with a thought in my head, a strangely blissful in-between of sleep and awake and awareness. And so instead of really trying to grasp at the details of that thought, which I think would have ruined the moment, I just grabbed a pen, my journal, and wrote. And these are the thoughts coursing through my head:
I'm in New York City. I live, breathe, smell this town in a way that I never thought I'd get a chance to. Every November, as the holidays draw closer and the prospect of returning "home" begins to fade back into my consciousness, I stop. And think. About how a whole year has gone by, and what I did last year at this point in the semester (because back then, my life was measured in semesters) and what I was most concerned with at that point in time, what made me happiest and what I had envisioned for the future. Because I think what you worry about at a given stage of your life tells a lot about what's the most important thing on your mind at the moment.
And this thinking makes me grateful. Because at this time last year I think I was starting to unravel a little bit. There was the stress of trying to stay on top of classwork while interning in Beverly Hills at a job where I could tell the other employees were miserable; the impending panic of being able to find a job or have a more defined direction before graduation; the creeping feeling that I was running on empty because my mind was just veering in too many directions at once. I remember the break-in in San Francisco, the break-down in my apartment, the unabashed tumble of emotions as I tried to figure out why I was so internally stressed and still so adamantly in denial.
To say that a lot has happened in the past year is perhaps a moot point - of course it has. So perhaps a better thing to say is that a lot has simultaneously shifted and solidified within the last few months. As of the end of October, I've been in NYC for just over five months, and there are so many emotions associated with that anniversary of sorts.
Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.
I was so focused on other people's lives and helping them out so as to avoid taking a good hard glimpse at my own life and figuring out how to fix any outstanding problems. Spend time catching up with friends over dinner or a drink? It was preferential to actually studying for exams or finishing up projects, or heaven forbid, reflecting. I've always grown up as a nostalgic child, looking to the past and trying to figure out how to recreate it in my head so that it fits the mold of the steps that have taken me to where I am now, if that makes any sense. In other words, seeing my current position for what it was - at the time, on the brink of meltdown - meant that I wanted look back on my upbringing and my personality and see what it was that caused me to be so discontent at that point.
And everything pointed to two things. First, I was raised to be a perfectionist - follow-through and initiative were drilled into me from a young age. If I didn't know the answer to something, I just had to ask. And there was never any question about whether or not I would be able to accomplish something I put my mind to. I was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by positive influences and strong role models. Failure was not something I knew, though potential was. Too many teachers, too many people always saying that I had "potential" - untapped potential - to do something. It took all the way until high school to fully understand what that meant. Potential. The only thing stopping me? Myself.
I was shy beyond words. I would hide behind a book, prefer silence and awkwardness to trying to get to know other people. But while I might not have gotten to know other people very well, I knew my own personality inside and out. My likes, my dislikes. My fears, my talents, my weaknesses. All this plays into the here and the now, the fact that I'm striving to become a journalist, a profession that thrives on, honestly, learning about yourself through other people. The focus, on the outside, is off me. I'm a reporter: I absorb, I learn, I teach. Who would have thought that a profession that's so notoriously people-friendly would in the end begin to turn me introspected again?
The point is this. At this time last year, I was doing a lot of reflecting, about how I had become the type of person that I was, just mulling over my shortcomings, questioning my own motives to stay busy and stop thinking, but today...today, so much has changed. This year I reflect on being in New York and about how my experiences have shaped me. How being independent and stubborn in my beliefs, naive at times to the ways of the world, has gotten me this far. I know people say it's a combination of luck and skill that guarantees success (and what does that word mean, even?), but I also know that I can only control one half of that equation. Sometimes I do genuinely wonder how I got to where I am, able to talk to celebrities and big-shot editors without so much as a flinch. How did that even happen?
I do know this, though: I learned early on that if you don't ask, you'll never know. So these days, I'm just asking myself more questions than usual.
I'm in New York City. I live, breathe, smell this town in a way that I never thought I'd get a chance to. Every November, as the holidays draw closer and the prospect of returning "home" begins to fade back into my consciousness, I stop. And think. About how a whole year has gone by, and what I did last year at this point in the semester (because back then, my life was measured in semesters) and what I was most concerned with at that point in time, what made me happiest and what I had envisioned for the future. Because I think what you worry about at a given stage of your life tells a lot about what's the most important thing on your mind at the moment.
And this thinking makes me grateful. Because at this time last year I think I was starting to unravel a little bit. There was the stress of trying to stay on top of classwork while interning in Beverly Hills at a job where I could tell the other employees were miserable; the impending panic of being able to find a job or have a more defined direction before graduation; the creeping feeling that I was running on empty because my mind was just veering in too many directions at once. I remember the break-in in San Francisco, the break-down in my apartment, the unabashed tumble of emotions as I tried to figure out why I was so internally stressed and still so adamantly in denial.
To say that a lot has happened in the past year is perhaps a moot point - of course it has. So perhaps a better thing to say is that a lot has simultaneously shifted and solidified within the last few months. As of the end of October, I've been in NYC for just over five months, and there are so many emotions associated with that anniversary of sorts.
Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.
I was so focused on other people's lives and helping them out so as to avoid taking a good hard glimpse at my own life and figuring out how to fix any outstanding problems. Spend time catching up with friends over dinner or a drink? It was preferential to actually studying for exams or finishing up projects, or heaven forbid, reflecting. I've always grown up as a nostalgic child, looking to the past and trying to figure out how to recreate it in my head so that it fits the mold of the steps that have taken me to where I am now, if that makes any sense. In other words, seeing my current position for what it was - at the time, on the brink of meltdown - meant that I wanted look back on my upbringing and my personality and see what it was that caused me to be so discontent at that point.
And everything pointed to two things. First, I was raised to be a perfectionist - follow-through and initiative were drilled into me from a young age. If I didn't know the answer to something, I just had to ask. And there was never any question about whether or not I would be able to accomplish something I put my mind to. I was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by positive influences and strong role models. Failure was not something I knew, though potential was. Too many teachers, too many people always saying that I had "potential" - untapped potential - to do something. It took all the way until high school to fully understand what that meant. Potential. The only thing stopping me? Myself.
I was shy beyond words. I would hide behind a book, prefer silence and awkwardness to trying to get to know other people. But while I might not have gotten to know other people very well, I knew my own personality inside and out. My likes, my dislikes. My fears, my talents, my weaknesses. All this plays into the here and the now, the fact that I'm striving to become a journalist, a profession that thrives on, honestly, learning about yourself through other people. The focus, on the outside, is off me. I'm a reporter: I absorb, I learn, I teach. Who would have thought that a profession that's so notoriously people-friendly would in the end begin to turn me introspected again?
The point is this. At this time last year, I was doing a lot of reflecting, about how I had become the type of person that I was, just mulling over my shortcomings, questioning my own motives to stay busy and stop thinking, but today...today, so much has changed. This year I reflect on being in New York and about how my experiences have shaped me. How being independent and stubborn in my beliefs, naive at times to the ways of the world, has gotten me this far. I know people say it's a combination of luck and skill that guarantees success (and what does that word mean, even?), but I also know that I can only control one half of that equation. Sometimes I do genuinely wonder how I got to where I am, able to talk to celebrities and big-shot editors without so much as a flinch. How did that even happen?
I do know this, though: I learned early on that if you don't ask, you'll never know. So these days, I'm just asking myself more questions than usual.
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