Job + School + General Panic | Diary

TIA HERE and hoping to turn Duo Diaries a bit more personal from time to time. This is effort #1. Because here's the thing—as much as I love writing blog posts with a topical focus, sometimes I don't feel I have an adequate amount of time to create a post of the caliber I'm really hoping to achieve here. Currently, the DD drafts include "How to Listen to Lana Del Rey's 'Honeymoon' Album" à la this Taylor Swift 1989 post, several video tours of the Cornell University campus, and "How to Write a Query Letter," in the same vein as this post about reader's reports. So what's the holdup, right? Life, it seems, and all of the resulting anxiety.

When you're a senior in college, there's likely only one thing on your mind—grad school, or a job. For me, it's a job. If I go to graduate school, which is not something I'm completely set on as of right now, it won't be for at least a year. I want to be out in the working world for a bit before thinking of going back to school. After all, I've always been plagued by a desire to start working. I've got my eyes set on New York City, Los Angeles, and D.C., and I'm just waiting for the time to be right to start applying. For most career options, such as the ones I'm exploring, the go-to time to apply is three months before the start date. As someone who has to get things done immediately and as soon as possible, this is incredibly stressful. Waiting seems like the wrong move, when really, it's the only one.

If anything, these past few months have been a test of maintaining zen as the real world creeps up slowly behind me. Because I can't seem to sit still for a second, I've jumpstarted my freelance editing work and am currently on my third project, a novel. Simultaneously, I've grabbed onto a job as a copyeditor for an online news and entertainment website. I think, for now, these two things will satisfy my desperation to work. But, of course, having actual work in addition to school work has put my personal goals on the back burner.

To some extent, that is fine. My current big three personal desires include working on my novel, studying for the LSAT (I just need to improve a few more points, but of course that will take months of studying to achieve), and making YouTube videos again. You know how people always say things like, "don't wait," and "start now," when it comes to life goals? That advice is all good and sound until you actually try to apply it. In general, I think people are too stringent with themselves. They think (myself included) that life cannot move without a goal in mind. But I think a lot of the time, you don't even know what your true goals are until you find yourself achieving them.

Perhaps my real goals are not anything I can list out and check off, but rather more abstract. I think what I really want is to make a difference—a significant, palpable, positive difference—and live the happiest possible life. And thousands of little details could factor into how these are achieved, namely: money, work, interaction, connection, passion, consistency. When I think of my goals in this way, I feel like I understand what steps I should take in life, and am a little less afraid.

So as I write papers, read and read and read and read, swirl uncooked ramen in a bowl, drench my room in air fresheners, blast 8tracks songs I've never heard before, spin around in a mirror to memorize my ever-changing appearance, and put on makeup, I think I'm still moving toward what I really want, whether or not I feel that said movement is measurable. And that's just something I'm gonna have to learn to deal with.

A little less panic and a little more deep breathing—those are my current goals—and I will check them off, one by one, with a smile.

For more, check out Tia's new blog!

Much love,

T.