Getting My Act Together
My birthday is next month. I’ll be 27. I’m older than Lady Gaga, WTF?!
Well okay, I know I’m still a spring chicken and so far getting older is proving to be quite nice. I can basically do what I want. Rent a car. Vote. Buy some chardonnay. This is living! At work recently, my receptionist buddy and I were chatting between phone calls. We talked about how long I want to work as a temp and if she wants to move up in the company. Soon we discovered we went to the same college.
“Oh I went there, too! What year did you graduate?” - receptionist buddy
“2010, you?” -me
“2011. That’s cool, you’re only a year older than me, you have time to figure out what you want to do and temp. It’s not like you’re in your late twenties, we have a couple of years to figure it out.” -receptionist buddy
This was a fine opportunity to declare that I’m pretty much in my late twenties. But I felt a weird combination of being ashamed of my true age (yeah, yeah, it took me a couple of years to graduate, I’ll blog about that later) and also not wanting to embarrass her for basically telling me I should have my shit together by now. She is 22. She got herself a job as a receptionist and plans to move up some in the company. Good for her, honestly. I like her a lot. She’s easy to work with, showed me the ropes when I was new (I’ve been at this place for about two months) and we both laugh at this website everyday: whatshouldwecallme.tumblr.com
I think maybe I should have told her I’m not 23 or however old she thinks I am. I also want to know why she thinks a person’s late twenties is a reasonable age to have it together. When I was 23, way back in 2008!- I was finishing up college, interning and working at a restaurant. Things were looking good. Shit, when I was 25 I was pretty sure I was headed in a good direction- living in California with a paid internship at a newspaper. I was certain a job would follow, too (if not there, at another newspaper).
HAHAHA. Planning ahead is for dummies. Okay, it’s not, but it is a little. After the internship ended, I was 25 and found myself unemployed, moved back in with my parents and working at a Thai restaurant for a bit. Today I’m temping and in a few short weeks I’ll be in the thick of my late twenties. 27 came out of nowhere and my 22 year-old receptionist buddy lives in the care free, still partying it up on St. Patrick’s Day-land of early twenties-hood-dom-ville. I should tell her she needs to enjoy drinking with minimal hangovers while it lasts because soon half a bottle of wine will hurt in the morning (I could rally back in the mid-00s, I could rally, man).
I’m a temp. I can’t temp forever. I don’t know if I should get back into journalism and use my degree. Maybe I should stay in cubicle land. Maybe I should get more debt and go to grad school. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough. Maybe I should go draft a five year plan even though I just said planning is for dummies.
