Last night found me watching the Real Housewives of Orange County, wrapped in a seafoam green fleece blanket, with multiple layers of clothing. This is what no heat and 40 degree temperature leads me to do. Incidentally – California? Lies. “Sunshine! Warmth! Green!” All lies. What they don’t tell you is about the rainy season, and the 40 degree weather and how there are no air conditioners when the temperature surprisingly bumps into the 80s and 90s instead of the cool 70 it’s supposed to be year round. I will never be misled again by this golden state.
However, one of the O.C. Housewives sat on a couch, tears forming in her eyes, and said, “It’s so hard to have it all. We look like we do, but we don’t.” Another housewife chipped in and added, “But damnit, we want it all!” Ain’t that the truth. I look at myself, fairly young in the grand scheme of things. I’ve done lots of different things, had many experiences, and even more stories to share. I don’t think I’ve been pigeonholed into a box, but that just may be because I haven’t really set my roots down anywhere. I was working towards it while I was at NYU and working at my favorite job of all time, but then I decided to move across the country to a place I had never been to, nor knew anyone on a whim. With a month of “Hey, I’m leaving,” I left.
This? Is not what I would quantify as setting down roots. I love what this experience of doing something for my sanity and my rediscovering of myself has become, but California is not my home. My job? While I love it, and they keep adding more and more things for me to do, challenging me, giving me the experience that I hope will finally get me where I want to go? It’s only a temporary thing. So yet again, I touch down to earth for a short period of time before taking flight again. It’s been that way for years – I’m a nomad, restless, constantly wandering, and I will be that way until someone or something gives me a reason to stay.
I thought it might be GDB. That my future might lead to Millennium Park, Michigan Avenue, downtown Evanston, the houses around Wrigley Field with their stadium seating on top of the roofs. I knew I had always liked Chicago, from the first time I went, to the last time I was there. I even like their airport – for starters, their gates make sense to me. And they have people movers, unlike LAX (see here for the back story of my new hatred of LAX.) That I’d forge my way in yet another unknown territory, braving the cold, weathering the heat and passion of what was my relationship with him.
I used to think it would be New York. Skyscrapers, parks with metal trees, subways full of ipods and the people attached to them, my home sweet home for as long as I can remember. Where the literary industry thrives, where everything is constantly in motion yet slows down to smell the bloom of the garbage amidst the flowers. Where my family is. There’s no doubt that New York will always be home. But for how long?
For a time, I contemplated London. Foggy skies, “Cheerio luv!” hours upon hours of wandering through Kew Gardens, museums, the bars that close at impossibly early hours (who goes out before 11?!), access to the rest of Europe. Sure, British men aren’t THAT hot, but think of all the travelers! And Hugh Grant! Minus the hooker story! And Love Actually! Love Actually! Love Actually! I was so ready to move, I had started looking and applying to jobs there.
And instead, I chose California. The East Bay to be precise – the Brooklyn of San Francisco. It’s sweet here – eclectic, funky, and laid-back. And still, I can’t help but feel that I put my future on hold, until I move back to New York to finish my degree. That the things I’m increasingly learning I want – are not here. I want love, passion, a steady job that I look forward to going to and don’t have a time limit on, and an apartment that when I come home at night, I know it’s my place. I love the old-fashioned quirks of my apartment, but it reaches a point where a one bedroom converted is too much for two people. I could have all of those things – but I don’t know that I can have them all in the same place, or at the same time.
Ultimately, I just end up wondering – will I ever have it all? It seems like it’s so hard for me, as a young twenty-something, to really be able to find any stable ground anywhere, stable enough for me to want to put my wings down and let them relax. Nine months to a year – that’s my modus operandi. I move back to New York after a year in California, after a year in New York, after moving each year during college to a new dorm room. Sometimes, I feel like you can only have two things at a time – a great apartment, great job, but no love. Or a great love, great apartment, but crappy job. Or great love, great job, but no apartment. Granted, to a 20-something with no ties, these are the biggest concerns. For those with commitments, the want for more becomes so much greater, because of what they have.
In a way, I feel like I’ve been promised too much. I knew you had to work to get what you want, but I never realized just how much. Life doesn’t hand out A’s when you do well on this test or when you win the lead in a stage performance or get elected president of the English Honor Society. Life just sits back and lets you guide the course, and sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don’t. Now I’m in a place where I feel like I’m working, and I’m working, but I just don’t know what I’m working towards.
It just makes me want my future even more right now. I’ve never been a patient person, and with today’s gray area and plans but no definites, I want answers to my questions. And yet? I don’t. Because if my future were my present, what would I have to look forward to? There’s so much left to discover and uncover and experience, and as much as I may want to know my tomorrow today, I don’t want to miss out on living my life either. Until then, I’ll be here, flapping away, looking for a reason to plant seeds and start from the ground up instead of scouring the skies for a place to land.
It was like you’ve been in my brain. And then wrote this. This is exactly what I want. I don’t have the great apartment, or the great job or the great love, and its killing me that there is not one thing in my life that is stable. A big part of me wants to move so badly but I don’t know where. I just want to experience more. I know I haven’t experienced enough of NYC but I know there’s more out there for me to have and I kinda feel like I may be tied down here if I get a job and stay. I don’t know. I’m just as confused as you are.
Lets just have fun in the present instead of worrying so much about the future. It will get here when its damn ready and then we’ll look back at our mid twenties and say DAMN that was a fun time!
ohhh myyy. i so get it. and this post felt so familiar in that it could have EASILY been something i’d try to put into writing.
i have this fascination with wanting to discover what comes next. what else is out there? london sounds marrrvelous. all accents and chipper lifestyles in a foreign country. but sometimes letting it all out like this has helped me to recenter and focus on whats in my here and now.
hopefully it does the same for you.
Have you seen the film “Little City” from way back in 1997
Adam: People who are tragically ambitious and smart go to New York and people who are just tragically smart come here [San Francisco].
Rebecca: Oh. Well what about people who are just tragically ambitious?
Adam: They go to LA.
Here’s the thing, you’re not supposed to be grounded. Not yet, at least. When you’re young, you’re supposed to experience different things, jobs, places. To figure out what is you. What works for you. What makes the most sense. Then, when you’re ready, and it doesn’t matter if you’re 25, 35 or 45, you plant yourself down. With a great job. In a great city. And you’ll know that’s where you’re supposed to be. And if not, it’s not the end of the world. You have and probably always will touch down in some pretty amazing places.
I know what ya mean. I’m incredibly thankful I have the great relationship, but the apartment isn’t great, finances are tight, and I have no clue what career goals I should pursue. I feel stagnant right now in my job and in my personal growth. Part of me wants to move, but doesn’t know where. Part of me knows I’ll need a grad degree to make decent money, but doesn’t know the field, and can’t afford to make a random investment.
In college I felt optimistic, but I don’t anymore. I agree with you– life just isn’t fair or objective in the way school was. The people who know what they want and love it get ahead, and so do the people who basically get lucky with the right opportunity. But there are a whole lot of sad middle-aged people out there who settled for a mediocre job because they didn’t know what else to do, or because their opportunities just didn’t work out. Like my former co-worker who tried to enter the FBI, police force, etc., and kept getting to the last round before getting rejected. So now she resigned herself to a semi-enjoyable teaching career.
I hope I’m lucky with the opportunities that come up, and I hope you are too! But I’m sad to say I don’t count on it anymore.
It sometimes feels like I am walking a very precarious tightrope. As though there is a limited number of things that can go wrong at once, because I can only deal with issues in one area of my life at once.
We place a hell of a lot of pressure on ourselves as young ambitious 20somethings.
This post really spoke to me. As you so rightly alluded to, this is the plight of the twentysomething to a tee. Particularly of the formerly-overachieving-high-scoring twentysomething. We were always brought up to believe that, if we worked hard enough, we would get what we wanted. Our experiences reinforced that. Then we got to be adults and realized that working hard didn’t necessarily cut it anymore. I want the great love, the great apartment, and the great job and can’t seem to wrap my mind around why I don’t have those things.
I spent most of my 20something years wandering around, wanting the same things you talk about. As I enter the last few years of the twenties, I’ve come to realize that whatever I wanted, was right there in front of my eyes.
did you ever think about ohio? we’d love to have you
but what everyone else has said in one way or another – we’re not supposed to feel “settled” just yet. the 20s are our time for self discovery and if that includes venturing to many cities/countries across the globe so be it!
Did it ever occur to you, maybe we are never supposed to “have it all,” which is probably why we can never get enough of it.
The more you think about life, the more likely it is to become one looming existential crisis after another.
NY ups, with the subways and skyscrapers is good for clicky heels, flushed cheeks and writing. Berkeley downs, with the eclecticism and laid back attitude is good for introspection, cupcakes and of course writing.
What you are looking for is to feel grounded. It is a bit of a plateau. There you can listen to the most touching CD and still not drown in the mood. There you can go out shopping and make level headed decisions. There you can feel connected. Feel restored. Feel content. But you’ll also feel stagnant. And it is not the time for you to settle down just yet.
I often feel exactly the same way.
Exactly.
And I’ve contemplated moving all over the place just to do it.. yet find myself stuck living near DC.
Meh.
[...] can’t eloquently describe how I feel, I think DS said it best in her post last night. I just feel incredibly lost. I feel that the passion in me for what I’ve been doing has [...]
Wow, I dont think you even know how much i can relate to this post…. an THIS
I”’m a nomad, restless, constantly wandering, and I will be that way until someone or something gives me a reason to stay”
I have hopped around for 4 years, LA, NYC, CO, traveling, etc. and Im going back to NYC next week…..so I understand, and the last paragraph I comeptlely relate to. I want all of that that I’m looking for, or venturing out tog et, but yet I love my freedom and the ability to continue to discover..