I wanted to put this post out a few weeks late because I didn’t want to make graduation weekend about myself. Of course, I procrastinated, and here we are, an entire month after the fact.. Anyway, a few of my friends graduated from Chapman University this year, and I wanted to let them enjoy that experience because it’s one of the very few days in a person’s life that truly should be all about them.That being said, I found myself feeling very reflective the weekend of May 17th-19th because it had been one year since my own college graduation.
I found it strange to think that I haven’t been a student for an entire year because it was all I knew for most of my life. I have to admit, it was one of the most trying times of my life and even though everyone had warned me about it, I thought that I was immune to the strain of adjusting to post-graduate life. And even as I write this post now, I can’t help but feel like I’m whining about life, which is why I haven’t posted in such a long time. I didn’t quite know how to describe what I was going through without feeling guilty. It’s not like I went on a tour of duty and am now trying to readjust to civilian life. I have my health, my money problems aren’t that desperate (besides tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, but even that’s not that bad), my friends and family are in relatively good health, and yet here I was feeling depressed that life still wasn’t going the way I thought it would. That’s not to say I didn’t have actual problems: I haven’t had permanent or steady work this past year; I was let go from my long term temp job about a week before Christmas; I lost my phone; My purse (along with my SS card) was stolen. Shit happened and I really didn’t like it.
I seriously thought I’d be completely fine adjusting to not being a student. Since I’ve always worked while in college with minimal financial help from my parents (although ample moral support) I’ve always felt like an adult. How different could it be now? I thought I’d be doing the same thing, except now I wouldn’t have to go to class. One less thing to do. However, I didn’t realize how many hours I actually spent being a student not just in class. Take away all that and I’ve got a lot more time on my hands that I had to learn to use more constructively because when I don’t use my time constructively, I feel useless, which makes me feel depressed. Then it’s like a vicious cycle trying to get out of that frame of mind. Oh, and I love it when people think that because I’m an unemployed writer, that means I have all the time in the world to write…. WRONG. At the beginning of a writer’s career, writing doesn’t always pay, and when it does, the jobs are usually far and few in between. How am I supposed to be creative and spend hours working on my craft when I have to think about where my next paycheck is coming from? The answer is: do it anyway. And I’m still working that out.
