Slow and Steady

I’m two months into my new job as of this Saturday, and my God it feels like a lifetime (in a good way I promise). I remember being back in college in and as the end of my senior year crept closer, I kept wondering how long it would be until I got a job and was panicking for months about it. To stop my panic attacks, I applied to at least 20 jobs every day in the summer. Every. Single. Day. And I wrote a cover letter for just about each one of those jobs! My reward from this was that I’d finish all 20 applications before 11:00 AM, and then I could go float in the pool for the rest of the day (and, ya know, hopefully up my odds of getting a job). My method worked, and I stayed cool, calm, and collected all summer long because of it.

Now that I have been working so much, I have new panics: am I doing okay? Not just in my job, but in my life in general. Sometimes I think that I should be so much further along than I am in life. I see people getting engaged, married, with kids, working as coordinators and managers, successful models and actresses, and they’re all my kinder age of 22. I think to myself, Why are they so successful and I’m not? What am I doing wrong? Can I ever improve, or is it going to be like this forever?

These are tough thoughts and can really weigh on you. What is measured as success at such a young age? And with our demanding society and horrifically impatient generation, we want to be rich and successful and happy right this second. I think we forget that we have to work our way up to the top. And when I think about that, I know I’m doing alright. I live on my own in the greatest city on earth, pay my own rent, buy my own food, work full time at a job I got 100% on my own, and am generally getting by (which is only cause my loans haven’t kicked in yet-stay tuned for that nightmare).

I talk a lot about how much I miss college, but the truth is I just miss my friends and the relationships I had there. I sometimes get a glimpse at what some of the kids I used to talk to, who have another semester, are up to and I feel somewhat grateful for getting out. College is great, don’t get me wrong. It’s the best time of your life to not have any responsibilities and to just fuck around as much as you want. But now that I’m doing what I’m doing, and I see them doing the same wasteful stuff as if they’re all stuck in time, I don’t miss it as much. That unproductive, wasteful, high and drunk for no reason other than boredom routine got old, and I grew up a bit I think. I hope they learn to do more than that, but I’m feeling very proud of myself for getting out of the college rut and growing up enough to do this. I’m not saying that if taking an extra semester to graduate is a bad thing. If anything, I’m beyond proud of you for sticking it out and completing your education! All I mean is that the people I hung out with at school aren’t as motivating and great as I thought while there, and I can now see how different our paths in life are.

So, kids, don’t worry. You’ll probably go through a similar feeling of not feeling superb in what you’re doing after you graduate. But it all takes time to improve your skills out of the classroom, and that comes from working at the bottom and making your way to the top. You’re doing just fine, and probably better than other people you used to know. Slow and steady wins the race, right?