Life used to be a lot more romantic. Do you remember when youth was gilded in hope and light? Parties went on forever and the future was in the future? What about walking down streets with friends laughing about the latest gossip and day dreaming about being big successes by the time you're 25? Maybe i was the only one who was that naive. Maybe everyone else had their heads screwed on a lot tighter than mine.
My vision of life has faded from the technicolor brights of youthful idealization to the drab grey of stale reality. I am Frank Grimes. I am the loudest sigher. The elbows bent upon the bar and the last cigarette being savored. Whereas my senses used to be so perceptive and sensitive to the good as well as the bad, these days my senses are blunt and indifferent to highs and lows. Everything is more or less predictable, monotonous and something to get through. My motto for life is " Get from A to B as easily as possible, no matter what ". It used to be all about living a 'beautiful life'. Babe Life. Remember that? I literally cringe at the very fact that it was something that i made up and enjoyed. It was something that i actually believed in. I just laugh at that now because it's so fucking 'young'.
The day the romance died was when i realised that life was the most indifferent personality of all. She doesn't have eyes, nor ears or a conscience. She is just what she wants to do whenever she wants and you're just there to beg her for mercy and a break. The fact of the matter is that the good get better and the bad get worse. The rich bear rich and the poor bear poor. If not always then at least most of the time if someone doesn't go against the grain. It does happen, but not often. Your spirit is killed to the point where nothing can really hurt you anymore. But at the same time, nothing can rouse you either. So you live in a straight line, accepting and tolerating but never really savoring or cherishing anything.
All of a sudden you want that boring, conservative and stable life you've always been so dramatically against in your teens. A 9 to 5 job and enough money to put a decent meal on the table. You look at businessmen on the train and those 'everybodys' you went to high school with and wished that you could just have their lives because it is so easy and predetermined. Instead you are that weirdo who is too " eccentric " for a real job. You make it through being sad about all of this to just being almost completely detached for the sake of survival. I don't know which one is worse? Being sad or being so detached you have no more drive or will only a need to survive.
I feel sad reading this Yalei. I don't think you're too eccentric for a job, I know you've been told this before but maybe you weren't applying at the right places. I myself have just landed a full time design job at 24. It is my first 'real' job and I landed it in New York City. I feel accomplished and incredibly grateful right now but it has taken a long long time to get here and a fuck load of hard work. I left uni 2 years ago and barely pursued anything design related, I couldn't even imagine landing a job in that field, it just didn't seem possible. I continued to work horrible casual jobs where I felt like a slave. All I wanted was to work hard doing something I love. Why did that seem so hard?
ReplyDeleteSix months ago I was in Melbourne working 2 jobs (one at a yacht club every weekend and a call center every weekday). I was saving up because I decided I am going to move to New York. I moved to New York and I got a casual job to get by, I applied for internships/'real' jobs and experienced one set back that really cut me up. I stopped applying for creative things for at least 2 months. I worked on personal projects and continued working my casual job and soon I began to experience that same 'slave' feeling. I decided to give it one last shot and emailed one of my favourite design studios. I wore my heart on my sleeve and next minute I was in their conference room having an interview. It was for an internship and I got it. Tick. I was ecstatic. The next 3 months I interned 3 days a week (unpaid) for this studio. I worked my ass off (like any hungry intern does) and yesterday I walked into work and was given the news that I was going to being hired as a full time designer. I couldn't stop shaking and I still can't believe it.
I hope you don't see this message as a rub in the face - I'm really not intending that, I just want you to know that there is hope. If you work hard you will be rewarded. I know it's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking it's all over now, if you haven't made it by 25 then who are you! But you need to shake that attitude. New York is full of people with peter pan syndrome, everyone is still trying to make it at 30 and some of them still have no clue what the fuck they're doing. Don't measure your success or achievements by age - it's a dead end.
Sometimes I think maybe Melbourne wasn't for me. Maybe it's not for you either. Regardless I know there is a place out there for you. You're a talented young writer with a drive for success, mix that with a killer attitude and there is no way you can fail. I get it though, I can sit here and write all positive to you but I'm also writing to you because I have been there and felt "this is never going to happen". It doesn't feel like it will happen until it does. And it will.
Whoever you are, you've literally just sort of saved my hope. Who are you? Let's get a bagel in NY???
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