Life Lessons

Sorry that I left for so long, but I’ve been really busy. It should be known that the transition into adulthood is no easy feat. Apparently, at this stage in our lives, the only way to truly learn is to make mistakes. I’m going to share with you some that I’ve made so far, and the lessons I’ve learned. Look at me! I’m so cute…learning shit left and right. I digress…

Exhibit 1: Finding a place to live when your lease is up.

And here I thought shit would just fall into place. Get my ass on craigslist, choose from 3 apartments MAXIMUM, and call it a day. If being wrong were scaled on a one-to-ten basis, I would have scored a solid eleven point five. I went with a friend who I am planning on moving in with to see what felt like a million apartments, but were realistically probably about ten. We saw one perfect in the midst of the other appetite suppressing pads. Finding a place to live, building a home, and making yourself feel the level of comfort that you felt when your parent(s) put a roof over your head simply because they had to, is hard. I jumped from place to place frantically scrounging for a place to live. I hated where I was previously, the place that will infamously go down as “hipster hell”. Now, don’t get me wrong, my floor is my closet for the most part, but I work two jobs, I’m tired, and I don’t come home at midnight with any particular urge to clorox my bathroom from head to toe. However, it should be stated that as you start to get older, your standards for living situations will rise, and living in squalor is simply not acceptable. End of story.

Lesson:

Don’t put shit off. Trust the people you live with. Respect yourself, your friends, your possessions, your bathroom (and those who share it with you), and everything else that could obviously, or not so obviously affect the way you start each day. It’s a serious stress reliever when your shit is together, and you have a nice, clean, and organized place to rest your head at the end of the day.

Exhibit 2:  Stretching yourself out too thin.

I’ve been finding myself taking 5 hour bus rides, spending money on unnecessary traveling, going out every weekend, and being tired as hell when my work week would start. I would rationalize it by saying, “Oh! Its summer!” or “But I work so hard, I should be allowed to have down time!” and other things of that nature. All of that is fine, but I started to realize the toll it was taking on me, and I decided to put myself first.

Lesson:

Your 20’s are awesome because you’re still young, mildly cool, energetic, and willing. So willing that sometimes you want to do everything and take every opportunity that presents itself to you, because when will a chance like that ever come again, right?  Wrong. Don’t go to that party, or travel hours to see your friends if you’re working on 3 hours of sleep per night. Don’t make promises that you can’t keep. Start to become more conscious of the things you tell people you’ll do, for several reasons. The first reason for this obviously, is to not seem like an asshole when you back out of things last minute. The second, and maybe not so obvious, but just as important reason is that you need to take time for yourself. It’s not absolutely necessary to go out every Friday and Saturday night. Stay in, be a ham, lounge, listen to music, paint, read, mediate, do something where you are totally alone in your thoughts. This is healthy for the mind and the soul; you will also save a shit ton of money.

Exhibit 3: Ridding yourself of negative thoughts and people.

I’ll never have enough money, I’ll never be at my optimal health, he’ll never understand what he actually does to me, my parents are annoying, I think he thinks I’m crazy, I use Facebook too much, my Boss is a psychopath, etc….

I have so many complaints, and I know I’m not the only one, but feeding into the negative thoughts gets you absolutely nowhere, except in your bed at 3pm with the lights off. I feel like I have a million thoughts every day, and every time I think of something that stresses me out, I think of another thing, and it grows and grows until I want to lay my head on my desk and scream and cry like a spoiled four year old. I also have some people in my life that I would be better off without. As I get older, I’m starting to learn that things aren’t always going to be about being surrounded by a ton of people, just to feel less alone. I’d consider myself lucky to have five people on speed dial that I could call during a catastrophic time in my life, whether good or bad.

Lesson:

Get your ass up and stop feeling sorry for yourself. Everyone is broke (and broken for that matter), everyone is scared shitless, and everyone is trying to keep their heads above water. You can’t assume anything about anyone, and you have no idea what people might be going through behind closed doors. Feeling depressed or sad? Eat better, work out, mediate, or pray (if that’s your thing). Join a gym with a friend, take yoga or spinning classes, go hiking, do something that is good for your body. It is scientifically proven that people who are physically active tend to have a more positive outlook on life. Get moving. You’ll see a significant difference in your mood. And remember, no one likes to be around a miserable buzz kill, so don’t be that guy.

If your boyfriend or girlfriend is bad to you, leave them. If your “friend” puts you down and makes you feel like shit, disband yourself from them. It’s not the end of the world. We’re in our twenties we have plenty of time to meet “the one” or make new friends. Taking the first few steps towards these separations is the hardest, but it’s necessary and you’ll be doing yourself a great justice.  

Respect yourself. Respect yourself. Respect yourself. Know your worth, and remember that anyone who treats you like shit should be kicked to the curb, immediately. Don’t put up with anyone treating you like you’re less than human.

(** This does not apply to people who have been diagnosed with clinical depression. If you think are you suffering from this, consult a family member, friend, or doctor, and disregard everything I’m saying. I’m not an idiot, and I know that actual depression can’t be cured by eating vegetables and going for daily runs. I’m only speaking to the twenty-something’s that don’t think life is fair and are “suicidal” because they are not millionaires yet.)

I have so many more experiences and life lessons to share with you all, but work beckons me. To be continued. Now I just hope I can take my own advice.

Tattoos: Trendy and Fun OR Trite and Outdone...When are you just too old for it?

I promised my best friend during our senior year of college that I would go with her to get a tattoo. We were planning on getting the same thing, but since we were seniors, and together we could only come up with about 35 bucks, we decided to wait for our funds to be a little more plentiful. Besides, we weren't sober for the majority of our senior year, so our ideas were probably nonsensical at the time.
Fast forward 8 months. Her and I are about to go to our old school, to see friends, party, and relive our college days for a weekend. And she happens to think that this would be the ideal time to get our tattoos. I really want to, butI have two resonating doubts in my mind about permanently inking my body.

#1- If i get it with someone, and we get the same thing, it is, by default, a friendship tattoo. Perhaps the meaning of the tattoos don't necessarily mean friendship, and in this case, ours don't. But regardless, if something were to ever happen, and for whatever reason things didn't work out and we went our separate ways in life, I would forever be reminded of it with this tattoo. Now, don't get my wrong, I have absolutely no intention of breaking up with my best friend. She is a god sent in my life, and living without her doesn't seem like something I could do without completely losing my marbles. I love her, and I would like to think that even if we had the ugliest falling out, I would still love her. But alas, shit happens, life is a curvy bumpy road, and you truly never know what will happen next. Fuck, I don't even know what I'm having for lunch.

#2- Since this blog is about the anxiety of getting older, I feel it pertinent that I pose the obvious question(s). Will this shit look absolutely horrid on my old sagging body in about 50 years? (God willing I make it that long. My bet is that I probably won't, and that's better for all parties involved, but still). Will I regret what I got? Will it seem silly, and something that I will spend the rest of my life wishing I could take back?

I know this is pretty contradictory, since I mostly lament about the fact that life is short, and we are all getting old way too quickly. But when you have a hideous tattoo of a lightning rod across your chest with the name BUBBA underneath it, I imagine life will start to ruthlessly drag on. Seconds will feel like minutes, minutes will feel like hours, etc.
That, for the record, is not what I was planning on getting for a tattoo. But still. You see my point.

Should I just accept the fact, that I am 22 and I should know better than to ink my body? I wanted to get a tattoo when I was 18. It was going to be lyrics from my favorite band at the time, My Chemical Romance.  I still enjoy their music sometimes, but I'm obviously not as obsessed with them as I used to be. Besides, MCR gives me flashbacks to a time in my life where I wouldn't even recognize the person I was if she were standing in front of me right now. That's how far removed you can be from yourself in 4 short, but significant years. I feel like my mind, my opinions, my aspirations, my dreams, my fantasies, my whole being for that matter is undergoing constant development. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it simply is what it is. But if I get a tattoo at 22, whose to say I won't regret it when I'm 26? Whose to say that this permanent ink on my body will or won't have little, or no meaning at all to me?
To ink or not to ink...that is the question....


Happy Friday everyone, try not to drink yourselves into a submissive state this weekend. You're old now, it just looks trashy.

...That reminds me, I need to stop at the liquor store after work.

Drinking problem VS. Unwinding after a long work week. You Choose your choice.

I don't know what everyone thinks about kicking back a few at the end of the work week. Maybe smoking a cigarette or two. Unwinding. Decompressing. Chilling the fuck out.
I'm guilty of it. I do it almost every weekend now, which worries me. Am I trying to relive my college years? Am I not over the fact that I'm officially "over the hill" as some might put it? That the jig, is in fact, up for me, and my friends at that?
Now, I wouldn't venture to say I have a drinking problem. I don't think about alcohol the second I wake up. I don't particularly enjoy drinking every day. I don't even have wine with dinner, unless I'm at a friends and they have wine at at their place. In that case, I'll indulge in a glass or two.
It's just that, I know how I look at people who are older than me, say 29, 30, 31. At that point in my life, I would have liked to figure some of this shit out. Maybe have a path that seems sort of right. In other words, I don't want to be the girl that gets drunk every weekend still, because she's washed up and pathetic and has nothing better to do with her sad pathetic life.
Now, obviously, I've expressed these fears with some of my friends, and they immediately shoot me down, insisting that if this is a legitimate fear of mine, then it won't actually happen because I'm incredibly too aware of myself to let it. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe they don't want me to stop drinking because if I do, they'll have one less person to party with. Maybe I'm a paranoid psychopath that needs to calm the fuck down.
What better way to do that, than with a cocktail.
Am I right?
I knew this post would be futile.
Happy Thursday, we're all one day older. That sucks.

That fateful few days....and everything after that.

You know what I'm talking about.
Your first few nights at college.
Anything and everything was possible. You had so much to look forward to, so many people to make out with, so many drinks to consume, so many drugs to try, etc. It all seemed so big, no matter how small your campus was.
Fast forward four years.
You begin to realize that the things that seemed possible, the aspirations that you toted around in your pretty little head, that was either way up in the clouds, or rammed up your professors ass because you never went to a single lecture, but needed that A for your transcript (which, in time you've learned means absolutely nothing in the real world), have somehow all turned out to be bleak. Impossible. Or even worse: possible, with a little dedication and a lot of hard work. I know. FUCK THAT.
What ever happened to instant gratification? Do less, get more. I suppose that only works if you're a drunk frat boy who happens to be reasonably good looking. Those dudes used to get laid left and right. But even their lives got seriously derailed after college. They're balding, they have what appears to be a "drinking problem", and they actually have to respect women.
All of my realizations about life, post-college, have led me to believe that happiness is not an emotion. Well I mean, it is, obviously. But in my opinion, happiness is a privilege. Not in the sense that it can be handed to you by your rich father, or wealthy dead relatives. But rather, something you work hard for, and reap the benefits of. It requires effort, a clear, conscious effort to be truly, genuinely, sublimely happy. And the problem is, we, as the generation of the information age, who are so disgustingly used to getting things without trying very hard, don't know how to put in this effort. Not even for our own happiness. We're entirely too lazy to even figure out what it is, that could make us happy. We chase money, like everyone who came before, like everyone who will come after. We chase money because we are taught that it's the right thing to do, the only thing to do. And realistically speaking, it is. No one can sustain any lifestyle, without money. I can't. Neither can you. And right before that dude died at the end of "into the wild" I bet he was wishing he had a cell phone and some money to get his ass out of the shitty situation he got himself into.
It's a fact of life. And it sucks. I wish I could rewind 4 years, and still have a positive outlook. Still believe things were possible. Still believe in myself. Still believe in the power of my dreams.
At this point, if I can't see it, I won't believe it.
I guess I miss college, or maybe I just miss being younger. Having less responsibility. Having more to look forward to. Right now, this is my life. And since I'm getting paid for it to be my life, I'm assuming it will be my life for a while. Because I can't stop getting paid. Bills come every month, and they need to be taken care of, whether I bitch about it, or not. The banks want their loans back, the landlords want their rent. I succumb. We all do.

Sorry for the bitter rantings.
But, no I'm not.

I deserve no credit.

My friend recently started a blog, and to be honest, before hers, I was never inclined to start my own. But since I have a lot to say, and not many people to talk to because of my ridiculous schedule, I figure I'll leave the poor waiter alone and vent via this damn thing.

The things that are going to suck about my blog are:
1. There will be a very small demographic who will actually be able to relate, because as you can tell from the title, I'm bitching about things that "newborn" adults bitch about. Those who are on their beginning steps towards complete independence. This blog is for all you confused 20 somethings, who have no idea where they are going, what they are doing, or who they should be.
2. I'm a happy person (for the most part), but I also pride myself on my ability to embrace reality (sometimes). And usually, reality sucks. If you're looking for opinions or advice on life that is sugar coated, go to the goddamn bakery, because you won't find it here.
3. I will probably forget about this blog immediately after I post my first entry, so don't expect consistency. Don't expect anything, really, and you won't be disappointed. With regards to this blog, and life in general.


The things that are going to be awesome about my blog are:
1. You'll probably be able to relate.

Here goes nothing.
See you on the other side, bitches.