Hi all! Long time no chat. I have a post brewing about the really hectic week in August I had, but haven’t really had the motivation to write it.
But here are some rapid fire updates for your noggin:
I’ve started work! It’s going well, I like to think. I feel as though I’m learning a lot. I’m a product manager, for those who don’t know. (What is a product manager? That’ll probably be a future blogpost, to be honest.)
I’m in D.C. temporarily, saving money on rent and living with my uncle. It’s incredibly nostalgic because you’ll know if you’ve been reading my blogs for a while, I lived in D.C. with my uncle and my friends from college during the summer of 2020. It’s strange being back, this time without those same friends, but I feel like I’ve grown a lot since then and so it’s an interesting experience. I sleep in the same bed I did a little over three years ago, cooking in the same kitchen, bathing in the same bathroom, but I’m a different person with a new sureness in my step and understanding of who I am. (Or, partially, in a way that my 19 year old self just didn’t understand.)
I’ve been reading a lot! I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and initially shitted on the book intensely because of the annoying pick-me energy of one of the two main characters, but it then grew to be my favorite book I’ve read this year, and maybe one of my favorite overalls. I also read Madeline Miller’s Circe which is one of my favorites of all time now. I’m currently reading the Heroes of Olympus series and it’s…a little difficult to get through. I think Rick Riordan writes teenagers poorly, and writes teenage girls even worse. I usually just skip through the needless romance and just try to focus on the meat of the story, but it really just feels like such a downgrade after Madeline Millers’ works.
I got a tattoo! I’ll add a photo maybe next time (I’m typing this up on a train) but TLDR I got a last minute ticket to see Noah Kahan at Radio City Music Hall in New York on the last day of August. I’ve been to over fifty live shows. Concerts are my comfort place and something I invest a lot of time and money into because it brings me a lot of joy. Needless to say, I’m really familiar and comfortable in the concert scene. But during this particular concert, I had something happen that’s never happened to me in my 9 years of going to live shows: I cried the entire concert. Through every single song, from the first strummed chord to the moment he stepped off stage after the encore. I’ve cried before during concerts (I cried the first concert I went to when artists started touring again post-lockdown and I’ve cried during songs that are especially meaningful to me) but to cry through the entire two and a half hour show…That had never happened to me before. So I took it as a sign that maybe Noah’s lyrics were something worth permanently etching on my body if it could move me that deeply.
I’d been thinking about getting a tattoo for a while now. I actually have custom Adventure Time tattooes designed for me and I plan to get them in the future when I have more money/have more time/etc. The opportunity to get the tattoo didn’t present itself until a couple days later.
My best friend Emma got accepted to the Peace Corps early in our senior year, which meant that she would be in Madagascar working abroad for two and a half years. One of her last stops before departing to Madagascar was doing a short briefing and training in Washington, D.C. Coincidentally, I also was in D.C.
I took the train into the city to see Emma the night before she left. It was emotional, but neither one of us cried. We just talked about what she was expecting it would be like. How different we would be when she got back. How much can happen in two and a half years. And as we chatted away, I jokingly told her that there’s a piercing and tattoo place around here and that I’d impulsively get something for her. (Though, how impulsive can it really be when I’ve been wanting a belly button piercing for almost a year and a tattoo for nearly six months?)
After dinner, we passed by the shop and by some strike of luck, they didn’t do piercings after 6:30. It was 8, so my decision had been made for me. I pulled up the screenshot of Noah’s handwriting that I had saved in advance, just in case for this particular moment, and showed it to the guy.
About half an hour later, I walked out with a bandage around my arm.
I tattooed the lyric “And we’ll all be here forever” from his song “You’re Gonna Go Far”. I showed Emma the song afterwards, when we were lying on her hotel bed comforter as the minutes counted down to when I had to leave for my train.
So, pack up your car, put a hand on your heart
Say whatever you feel, be wherever you are
We ain't angry at you, love
You're the greatest thing we've lost
The birds will still sing
Your folks will still fight
The boards will still creak
The leaves will still die
We ain't angry at you, love
We'll be waiting for you, loveAnd we'll all be here forever
And we'll all be here forever
We sure will
The song means a lot to me, maybe for obvious reasons, and it felt fitting for the moment.
As for my plans now, I’m currently on an 8 hour train from D.C. to Boston to say hi to some friends back at MIT and also move my shit out of the sorority house into my storage unit in the city.
It’s been crazy just…being an adult for the past month and a half. I have a 401K and a health savings plan and a flexible spending account. I scheduled my own optometrist appointment. I have a corporate credit card that I booked flights and hotels on for my onsite to Seattle in a few weeks. I’m scheduling post-graduation trips with my friends to Vegas and Cancun and London and. Everytihng is all happening. And it’s crazy.
I think even more so, I just can’t believe I’m doing this alone on my own. I think my pre-February self could have never imagined me navigating adulthood and life like this on my own. And that really isn’t anyone’s fault, but my own. I didn’t believe I had it in me to do all this. To know how to survive outside of a relationship.
It feels crazy to still be tying a lot of my growth and development back to the breakup, especially 7 months after the fact, but I think it just goes to show how much growing I still have left to do. I want to get to a point where I am independent and it no longer comes as a surprise or a shock. Instead, it’s an expectation, a fact of the matter. A “Yeah, of course I can do that on my own. Why couldn’t I?”
And I’m excited for the moment I can finally reach that point. But for now, I will continue celebrating the little adulthood victories while I can.