It felt so good at the time. We went shopping for nice clothes, spent money at the nicer bars, and we went to every final house party we could manage. We had surprisingly done it. We fought through college and now we had our first real adult achievement: a degree. I was so excited for what was ahead of me. I was going to travel, get a second dog, throw parties in my one bedroom apartment that had pretty much maintained a well-known status of being a studying dungeon for the past year. I was going to go out more, and I was going to meet more people. I had the free time now, and everything was going to be great. There was nothing but good things waiting for me in the real world.
Looking back, I wonder how I managed to miss the reality of post-grad. I had many older friends that were going through their first year of post-grad, and each of them were struggling with their lives in some way. Some experienced break-ups with their serious significant others, and others were facing the struggles of real commitment. More friends struggled to find jobs or, at least, jobs that made them happy. Some friends even had a nice mixture of struggles in both their love and career lives. I had been there for all of it, and I never actually thought that this was just another step in the growing up process. I just figured this was where their lives were, and my life was going to be different.
Once I graduated, I really ended up more concerned with money and having a savings account. I got two jobs, and while one was extremely fun, the other was probably the worst decision I had ever made career-wise. I was miserable even if it was a position that I had hoped to have for my post-grad career. Since I was working two jobs, I never had a day to take a break from the dread that outlined each day. When I did get time off, those rare days became days to run errands, and that just made the free time feel like another day of work. Every day was essentially the same, and no amount of going out to eat or laughing with friends was changing the way life felt.
In mid-summer, while work was at its slowest, and life dragged on, I surprisingly got a call from my university. I had an incomplete in a class from not doing a final paper, and they were hoping I would turn it in so they could write out my diploma. I was taken aback and lied saying that I had already written it up. I would definitely turn it in next week. I rolled my eyes and sighed. I was already working two jobs, and now I managed to completely forget about not doing a final term paper when I got sick during finals? Life is really trying to wear me down.
I went back to finding the assignment. A simple comparison paper on two novels we had read during the semester. I got to it, and started reading the novels again, looking for similarities in themes and motifs. I started searching the authors. I dove into Wikipedia articles and interviews on YouTube. I got really into my assignment and all the little things it was teaching me. Research was letting me forget that I never had time off. Reading was keeping me at peace. Turmoil at work got worked out with the turmoil the protagonists faced in their plots. I stopped worrying about problem solving at work, and focused on problem-solving the most effective format of my paper. Days stopped blurring by because each day became a new development in progress on my paper, and in about a week, it was finished.
With no paper left to keep me occupied, I got bored again. I started noticing the way the hours dragged on again. I kept going out, thinking it would alleviate my boredom. One night, after a fun night out, I noticed a voicemail from an ex. She was checking in after having talked about me with friends earlier in the day. It was a thoughtful voicemail, and it made me think about all the girls I had ever dated. I pulled out the notes and photos I kept from each of them, and I thought to turn the memories into a nice project. I started relearning poetry forms. I researched different ways to self-publish. I started researching contemporary writers in my age range to see what they were creating. I started learning again.
