A Future Somewhat Known

I sort of dropped the ball on this whole blog thing. Suddenly someone offered me a job and I began a whirlwind of commuting, turning myself into a nomad, and finally settling into an apartment and a job. I haven’t quite come to terms with the fact that I am now situated in a new city with a career. In my mind the summer is almost over and I’m just getting ready to finish up my summer internship and head back to my tiny dorm room for fall semester.

Instead, every morning I get a wakeup call. My alarm clock starts off quite enjoyably, almost like it doesn’t want to disturb you from your pleasant slumber, but just as you start to feel soothed, it begins violently beeping at you until you wake up and realize you have to go to work. Every morning I wake up in my very own apartment (that I’m spending a small fortune on) and struggle to drag myself out of bed and onto the metro. I put my iPod on as loud as it will go, put my head down, and hope that the homeless men on the street leave me alone just this once.

As many of my followers know, I wanted a job…badly. I wanted to get out of my parents’ house and have some independence. Independence, I have learned, is terrifying. Yes it is nice to not have my father screaming at me to wake up at the crack of dawn for no reason, but then again I have my obnoxious alarm doing that now. Any yes it is nice to be on my own and not have to live with my parent’s rules, but I have no one to pack my lunches for me and have dinner waiting on the table when I get home.

Do not get me wrong, I LOVE living in D.C. I’m extremely happy with my job and my apartment and am excited for the road ahead, but sometimes I do look back and wish I was still in college. Not because I miss the party atmosphere, and certainly not because I miss the classes, but because I just miss the ease of it all. In college you wake up, go to class (maybe), and come home to get ready for the night ahead. You didn’t think about bills and paychecks, you just did what you wanted until someone either told you to stop spending money or your credit card got rejected.

The one thing that I am taking time to adjust to is having my afternoons clear. I don’t have homework, I don’t have to study for that huge midterm that I’m definitely going to fail, and I don’t have to do research for that 20 page paper that’s due in 4 hours. What I have is happy hours, lots of them, in fact I will never turn down a happy hour. Those days used to be reserved for Fridays when the bars would be packed with students who think happy hour exists on Fridays alone. Now they exist five days a week (seven if you find the right bar) and I have decided to make it my personal goal to seek out the best ones.

Seeing as I’m no longer unemployed, this blog isn’t going to be able the struggles and hardships of finding a job, although I still sympathize will all my fellow grads who are relentlessly hunting. Instead it’s going to be more about life in a city, adjusting from school to the real world, and the ridiculous encounters faced on a daily basis. Enjoy.