May 21, 2008
After graduating...It's a strange feeling to be where I am. I just finished a book by Nick Hornby, Slam, that I bought at the Dublin Airport. As the protagonist deals with the implications of having a baby at 16, he finds himself relying on the hospitality of his parents and the baby's mother's parents to make the situation work. Suddenly what was natural and taken for granted, being a kid and the allowances made for being a kid, are no longer natural and can no longer be taken for granted. The feeling's sort of like that, except I'm not a teenage father. I'm a college graduate at precisely the age of a college graduate. And increasing number of college graduates move back in and live from home. But it's like, even though nobody has said anything, I feel like an interloper. Like, I have all the tools I'm supposed to need to be my own man, as it were, but I don't know where I go from here. Well, it's more like I just got back from another year at college just like every other summer after a year at college. But there's not going to be another year at college, and I need to get a job. But I don't see how I get from here to being steadily employed with my own place. No one's telling me I have to go into work tomorrow, but at some point, it's not going to be acceptable to passing my days like it's summer vacation. How will I know when that day arrives? And how can I prepare so that when it's no longer acceptable to be living at home, I'm not living at home? When I was getting out of the tub with my book, I had a sudden flash to move-in day. That is, move-in day for the first apartment I'm going to be paying for out of my own pocket. And it's a lonely thought, the thought that when I wake up in sick in the middle of the night some night it's really just going to be alone sick in the middle of the night. So right now, my parents are still my parents and I'm still their kid. But the rules of this society state that that's not to be the case. How do I make that transition? I'm not even really depressed at this point, just... uneasy?
posted by Adam at 00:25 |
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Adam Freelance Film Critic
Albany, NY
Boston, MA
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