All posts in: quarterlife crisis

life maintenance
07 Sep 2012

life as a normal human

I am looking back on the past months, six months, year, three years, and… I can’t figure out what happened. Yes, I did so many great, fun things, got so much experience, and I didn’t go broke, and took amazing classes and met amazing friends I hope to have all my life. I have a job now. I must have did it right.

But a big part of that was putting my head down, muscling through, and other metaphors that mean hard work. More specifically, I worked 40-50 hours a week on top of grad classes, worked seven days a week, skipped vacations and didn’t watch TV and took a lot of ibuprofen.

It wasn’t particularly fun. I wasn’t always sure of my choices, or even aware that I was making choices. Yes, I have a job, but for three years, I wasn’t quite human.

Now, however, I am. I have things like time and energy that I haven’t had for years. And what’s even stranger – when I last had these things, I was living in my parents’ house and making 10 dollars an hour and fretting over my long distance relationship. I have all sorts of adulthood and security, and time.

So what do I make of it?

Right now, it’s a struggle. Everything I’ve been wanting to do, everything I still want to do, everything that is fun and everything that is work, everything everything everything is here, on the table, but what do I do this weekend?

I’m still muddling through this transition, and I am sure to keep you updated.

 

 

life maintenance
27 Aug 2012

2012: week thirty-four

August 19 – August 25

These weeks have been a bit of limbo – settling into a new routine, schedule, job, but also getting ready to disrupt said schedule and routine with a Move and a New Address. Things just won’t be until after September 1.

In an absence of a permanent location and entirely settled routine, I am trying to focus on good habits. Getting up early. Consistent (mostly sugar/carb free) sustenance. Running for consecutive days. Writing. Etc. Good habits will follow you anywhere, and if habits are already in place, when you arrive you’ll say “Oh! I must set up my blah-di-blah so I can blah-di-blah immediately!” instead of being a lazy lout and never unpacking a single box.

Speaking of lazy louts, I slept in yesterday and today and my neck and head paid for my sins. There are days that I am tense and headachey to the point of misery, and those are the days I delay caffeine and sleep past 9 a.m. I think that means that I am old, old woman. Or I need a new pillow.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Thanks to Ashley, I discovered like 7 new podcasts this week. Favorites included Professor Blastoff and JV Club. And the Josh Radnor episode of Making It? A dream. Ted Mosby + Zen meditation + euchre. Lust.

Watching:

  • LOST. LOST. LOST.
  • That boy I live with finally went out for the night on Thursday and left me at home alone. “What are you going to do tonight?” he asked. “Pack,” I answered. And then I watched Twilight. World’s most awkward movie.

 

life maintenance
25 Aug 2012

all the things

My apartment is half empty, half wrecked. Boxes everywhere, full, half-full, empty. I don’t know what to do with all these library books – these library books! Who packs up books that belong to a library and puts them into a U-Haul?

Moving is a great excuse to start clean. New place, new mindset.

But first, you must confront everything in your head, your life, your apartment. Maybe I have been watching a few too many episodes of the last season of LOST, but this feels like a reckoning. Is this object going to have a place in my new life? Is it useful or beautiful? Do I have time to think this hard about every object I put into a cardboard box?

I’m hoping that moving won’t knock me out to the extent it did last time I moved. The 1st falls on a weekend, not a workday. I will have an entire 48 hours to move in, unpack, and recover.

However, I have the next six days to reckon with this: my emptying apartment and all the memories it holds, the fresh life I might find in my new place, and, oh yeah, all of my shit.

1
quarterlife crisis
07 Aug 2012

morning pages

I first learned about Morning Pages four years ago, when my fiction writing started to feel stressful, when I was getting ready to go to grad school, when I was feeling torn between a creative and professional life. The Morning Pages are part of Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way – a longer plan for seeking creativity of all types. I’ve never fully committed to the plan, but the pages… they keep resurfacing.

Morning Pages are simple – wake up every morning and write three pages, longhand. You write whatever you want – the exercise is used to both foster creative discipline as well as clear your mental slate for more productive work. A journal with no expectations, no requirements except that you keep writing, stream of conscious-like, until the pages are full.

I’m not always great at writing in the morning – I take a long time to wake up, I get up late. I’m also excellent at crafting little excuses and lies – I never write three pages, for instance, always two, because my paper is narrow-ruled and my handwriting small. I’m also not convinced of their usefulness. Sometimes, I think that spending time on my inner neuroses doesn’t “clear the deck” – it just makes me more neurotic. So I start censoring my pages, which is counter-intuitive to the whole project, and then I start to question the exercise altogether.

But despite all that imperfection, I keep coming back. I started again last week because with all my road trips and vacations and sleeping in and decisions and the boy  home on summer vacation, I felt like I lost myself. When I forget what my own voice sounds like, that’s when I want those pages, whether they are in the morning or at 5 p.m., whether I am neurotic or level-headed,

whether I am living like an artist or not.

 

books
03 Aug 2012

the real live librarian

I’ve been sitting on this news for a few weeks because it just hasn’t felt real. It hasn’t felt possible that after a 2012 that was made of constant ups and downs, after three years of ridiculous schedules and harrowing schoolwork and jumping without a parachute across the country that yes, yes, things would just work out.

After years of work, countless risks, and months of planning for the worst, I just wasn’t prepared to get the best. Yes, I got a job. Yes, it is a librarian job. Yes, I get health insurance and paid time off to do things like, oh, go on a honeymoon, and yes, I get to take public transportation and yes, I get to stay in Boston.

Yes, it is everything I am looking for in a job right now, and more things that I just didn’t think existed in a library job – I saw the posting and my jaw dropped because, perhaps, this job posting had been written specifically for me. I dropped all my evening plans to apply, my jaw dropped again when I was asked to interview, and I crossed every finger and toe for the long three weeks I spent waiting to hear back.

I start on Monday, so I’m sure that this will be like any-other-job and come with its fair share of challenges/annoyances/pressures, but yes, I am excited I am excited I am excited.

I’d like to keep the specifics away from this personal space, but if you are librarian-ly incline, please email me and I’d be happy to dish, in full.

But broadly speaking, I am getting paid to buy books. Children’s and YA books.

This might be as close to a dream job as it can get.

Thank y’all for reading through all of my career and job searching angst… I’m sure there will be more angst along the way, but for now, everything is falling into place. Sometimes, you work hard and get what you want.

Me = Over the Moon.

4
grad school
05 Jun 2012

new life, new notebook

You know what they always say:

when life hands you lemons, go out and buy a fancy notebook.

I haven’t kept a daily notebook like this in quite some time. Grad school has been a mix of self-created spreadsheets and printed schedules and elaborate systems with binders and note cards and color coded things.

Yes, there is still the Google calendar, which was necessary to balance three jobs, but there is a limit to what the GCal can do. It can tell you where to be and when to be there, but it can’t tell you what to do in the in betweens. It can’t keep you on track, longterm, when your days and weeks become less regimented and begin to blur together.

Enter: the daily Moleskine. One page per day for to-do lists, chores, schedules, dinner menus, books to read, notes, recipes, phone numbers. A place to write down what time you need to set your alarm or leave for the bus. A place to flip through the upcoming week and map out your free time. A place to practice your penmanship. To draw little pictures. To scheme. To scribble things out.

To sit down and think about what’s important in my week.

This is a luxury, maybe. Something I didn’t have time for while I was studying, something I didn’t find useful. But for now, I can, and I feel like I should.

A new notebook is good for my soul, I think. Without a pen on paper in my life, I feel like I might drift away.

2
life maintenance
04 Jun 2012

2012: week twenty-two

May 27 – June 2

I spent most of last week in either a blind panic or other state of heightened anxiety. I made and recovered from a major scheduling error, rented a car for the first time, drove it for 4 hours (by myself) to places I have never been before, prepared for/performed for a job interview, and had at least two days where I ran on 5-ish hours of sleep.

There is nothing resembling equilibrium going on in my life right now, and I don’t think there will be any time soon. I don’t want to spend the rest of my summer feeling grumpy, but I’m not sure that any amount of concerted effort/planning/worrying/positive thinking will make much of a difference. This too shall pass, but for now, I’m in the muck of it.

For now, I’m going to focus on being well – sleep, hydration, no more sugar + grains, exercise, etc. Structure. Routines. Tidiness.  Peach cuddling and cooking dinner and phone chats and documentaries on Netflix.

Other assorted acts of hopefulness.

Reading:

Watching:

  • Switched at Birth – I am determined to finish Season One! I’ve been working on it for almost a year, which is just excessive.
  • On Wednesday, there was a lot of Gilmore Girls, season one. I can’t believe Dean dumped Rory like that! Scoundrel…

 

life maintenance
02 Jun 2012

level up

This radio(blog) silence brought to you by:

  • Exhaustion
  • Stress
  • Worry
  • Lack of will to read a single book ever
  • Allergies
  • Headaches

and

Skyrim.

My apologies. I will try to haul myself off the couch and pry my cramped little hands from the controller sometime soon…

grad school
22 May 2012

notes from the job hunt, vol 1

I. The Numbers

I have been applying for jobs for nearly three months now. In that time, I have applied for thirty positions.

Out of thirty, I have received…

  • One Skype interview
  • One phone interview
  • One follow-up phone call
  • One job offer (my new part-time job)
  • Four rejections

The remaining 23 jobs are, supposedly, still on the table – including the two aforementioned phone calls.

II. What I am Looking For

I am still pursuing positions that will move me on my desired career trajectory; youth/teen librarian positions at major public libraries or in major urban areas. I am also applying for non-librarian positions here and there – literacy non-profits, literary publications, etc.

However, the closer September 1 draws, the more pragmatic the job hunt becomes. The reality of staying in New England – within driving distance of Mr. Teacher Fiance’s job – seems more likely. Recently, I have honed in on the Western Mass/Northern Connecticut region, and also started applying for academic advising positions in the Boston area.

III. What I’ve Learned

If anyone says “Oh, at least you got the experience!” after I get a job rejection post-interview, I want to cut them. Losing out on a job you really want feels exactly like a break up – the barrage of internal self-loathing, the random tears, the loss of hope for the future. But it passes more quickly… maybe break ups would go smoother if you knew you had to find a new man before September 1 so you wouldn’t be homeless? Anywayy… the objective “experience” of job interviews is probably valuable. However, it’s intangible – it’s not like you can put “I had 35 GREAT job interviews!” on your resume.

What is valuable, to me, is what I learn from all aspects of the application process. Assessing what jobs I’m drawn to and figuring out how better to select future positions. Looking at which resumes and cover letters are the ones that get a follow-up… and then, during that follow-up, what questions do the reviewers have – aka, what did you FORGET to put in there? This is all comforting, helpful, and make me feel like I’m moving forward at least.

IV. What I’m Doing Now

  • Re-discovering my personality

I had an interview awhile ago for a job I really would have liked. I wasn’t really confident throughout the interview because I’d prepared for something entirely different than what I encountered. I dreamed up impressive answers to generic but intense interview questions, I studied the library in question intensely, I thought big thoughts about librarianship. And I’m glad I did all this because now I have an entirely different view of where I want to go in the field and what kind of jobs can get me there… but no. These questions were hard. These questions were abstract. These questions were “Tell me about a moment when you felt XXX about yourself.”

I was interviewing after a full day’s work during a particularly hectic week. A hectic 50 hour week. It occurred to me, at this inopportune moment, that I had spent the semester focused so intently on resume-building and job hunting and working my ass off, I was too tired to be an individual. My hobbies? Listening to podcasts on the bus. My favorite part of the day? Sleeping like the dead.

  • Adjusting my job hunting strategy to a new schedule

I have more free time now to do such things as, oh, revive my personality. Yay! I also have less time where I am at jobs that chain me to a computer for extended periods of time. Oh, cooking and cleaning and showering and playing Skyrim is nice and all, but I can already feel myself checking out a bit… I need to figure out a way to stay motivated while working ONLY 30-40 hours/week.

Ahem.

 

I will probably update this later… UNLESS I just get a job in the next few weeks and my job hunt is exceedingly easy. But who am I kidding? I will surely think of something else to say before then, either way. I will probably have some kind of existential crisis and then 24 hours later get a job. That is just how I roll.

life maintenance
10 May 2012

what will i learn next?

So, this is my last week of grad school.

…

correction:

SO, THIS IS MY LAST WEEK OF GRAD SCHOOL YOU GUYS OMGASDFASDFWEreralkejr;lwk232

I have been in school since August of 2009. I have not had more than a week’s break from classes in almost three years. I’ve been working anywhere between 1 and 27 jobs. My life is school and school is my life. It now appears that I am being kicked out of my institution, and I must seek greener pastures.

Ideally, those greener pastures would include A Full Time Job, but more on that nonsense later.

And even if I was to suddenly find myself with a smashing, 40 hr/week career job, I’m afraid that I am a busy body. Taking class and working eleven-million jobs has exacerbated the problem. I can barely watch a movie or play a video game or sit quietly on the couch anymore. I need projects, I need to keep moving, I am probably bordering on manic but my Brain! Must! Keep! Moving! otherwise I start to panic.

Well, this post is getting weird. Onto the good stuff. In order to shut up my panic-brain, here are some things I would like to learn now that I have a little time on my hands.

Learn how to knit

I have been meaning to learn how to knit for years and years and years. My whole family does it. I am jealous of the things they can make. My roommate took two classes and could suddenly knit entire outfits, she was such a natural. I, on the other hand, knit this square, and that was it.

I would like to try again, but in truth, knitting might not be high on my priority list. You see, the reason I keep quitting is not because I am so busy or have questionable talent, but because I am too broke to buy yarn. While I will have more time in the near future, I will not have more money. Conundrum.

Learn how to speak Spanish

A) I have always wanted to learn another language. I took two years of Spanish in high school and two semesters of French in college. I can therefore speak not-much-of-anything, but I feel I could pick up a little of either language with a bit of practice. I’m no stranger to language-learnin’. Why not learn the language that, oh, thousands of my fellow American citizens speak? That would be useful, huh?

B) You would not believe how many jobs I am getting boxed out of because I do not speak Spanish. I am a little perturbed that my fancy grad school education has left me somewhat unemployable in this manner! Anyway, this skill could be marketable for me, as well.

Learn how to run a 10K

Okay, so you are wondering “hey, Jessica, whatever happened to running a 5K? Well I will tell you: I have been able to run 3 very slow miles (with reasonable/limited amounts of walking) since about March.

But right when I was getting comfortable running 2-3 miles 4 or 5 times a week, I got really-really-really-busy. I stopped having time for quite so many runs, and on the evenings I did have off, I collapsed in a puddle of exhaustion.

I am not really making much progress, mileage-wise.

Anyway, I’d like to get my momentum back, and I’m thinking about formally “training” for a longer run. I spotted a little training plan on the Marriage Confessions blog that looked completely…. reasonable. I think this will motivate me to use some of my new-found free time to get off my butt and run regularly again.

 

Learn how to meditate

Some people are really zen and chill and they never grind their teeth or accidentally hold their breath or sit with their shoulders up against their ears. Some people can shut off the talk-talk-talking in their brain for more than 1 minute. I think those people are happier than me and they can do all that because they have learned to meditate.

Maybe this is not exactly true, but I feel there is likely value in being able to sit in silence and be. That is not a skill I have cultivated. I think it could help my Physical-Manifestations-of-Stress problems, as well as well as make me a less anxious (aka less snippy, less weepy, more pleasant) human being.

This will be hard. The idea of scheduling a half hour to “sit” just blows my mind. Sitting? What is that? I’m either on the go, crashed on the couch, or asleep.

 

Learn how to get married

I went through a brief “Plan-your-wedding-before-you-are-engaged” stage. Years ago. When I had more time to day dream. And had no idea how much things like weddings cost. Anyway, I would like to get married sometime in 2013, so now is the time to learn… and learn fast!

This is probably a post for another day, but I basically want nothing to do with wedding-planning, so this could be painful. Can we skip right to the cake-tasting?