changing perspective

I started this blog to catalog my life, so that when I wonder how I got to where I will be in 10 years, I will have some record of where I've been and how I felt as I "grew up". So, to continue the story tonight...

I finished It's a Wonderful Lie tonight. I definitely found it to be an eye opening a read. Just as I suspected, it gave me a renewed sense of excitement toward life in my twenties. I could picture a friend in her twenties who is living nearly every experience outlined across the novel. There was a piece of the life I'm living in each of the stories, too. I'm the girl who loves to travel, the one who is not satisfied with her job, the girl in love, the girl who wants to get out of the town that she knows like the back of her hand in search of something new and exciting, the girl who wants to get married and the girl who in a very small part of her heart wonders what it could be like to be single again. I am just a girl in my twenties, fumbling through my experiences, thriving in my triumphs and learning from every place I've been, emotionally, physically and mentally.

I remember that once I had this dream of living in a tiny 1 or 2 bedroom apt, making it easily on my modest salary, decorating shabby-chic room and exploring a big, exciting city. My dream now is mostly the same, except now it includes Ryan.

I am finally coming to terms with my current job because there is a closer promise of moving away, moving out of Gainesville. I am not stuck being a secretary, I am waiting for the next big thing. I didn't become a secretary just because, I became a secretary because I desperately needed to get out of banking. I met a bunch of fun people and I mostly enjoy my work days. My hours are decent and my weekends are fabulous and relaxing.

Now that my book is done, I am actually looking forward to going back to reading The Wheel of Time series.

"It's a wonderful lie"

My books arrived in the mail today! I have been dying to get out of the Science fiction series that has had my attention for the last 2.5 years. It's a 13 or so book series, it's thrilling, it's suspenseful, it's a fun read. BUT, I am ready for something girly, that isn't a trashy romance novel. I found this: "It's a Wonderful Lie--26 Truths about life in your twenties" edited by Emily Franklin.

In the forward, I found the reason I believe will make me finish the book in record time. The "Quarterlife Crisis" - "[It is] not the idle whining of a coddled, presumptuous post-adolescent. It is the response to reaching the turning point between young adulthood and adulthood: it is the amalgamtion of doubt, confusion and fear that comes with facing an overwhelming set of identity issues and societal expectations at once." It's all about these women with big dreams of what their great college education would do for them, great job, great place, great boyfriend, great fashion and greatness in general. The truth is, there are so many of us graduates these days, and such lower salaries for starting out, that we can't afford these great things, we have to work so much and so hard we don't have time for the great relationship and our parents are hounding us hard to be great, the pressure of getting there is exponential not only from society, but from our selves. To those precious few, those already achieving greatness, how did you do it?

Some of the chapter titles/categories of twentysomething life (or beliefs we had about our twenties) include "I'll have an amazing apt and love my job", "I'll know myself and know what I want", and "I'll be where I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm meant to be doing". This isn't one of those self-help books, it's written sex & the city style, with stories practically pulled from several different twentysomething diaries.

When I joined the real world of working, I thought working at the bank was going to be a fantastic job with great opportunities. I had this big dreams of a fantastic wardrobe, great pay and promotions. Well, the salary didn't supply enough for the great wardrobe and the boring work did lead to any motivation for working toward that horribly boring looking promotion. I knew as soon as I got in there that I wanted out. I researched all of the necessary steps to becoming a teacher or a nurse. I considered grad school, I considered marriage, babies and no job. And then, I ended up in the Dept. of Urology and am still very seriously considering all of the above. The point? Life after college, is just that, my life...after college. Going back to school would give me somewhere between 1-4 years of stalling time.
I'm looking forward to reading the stories of how other women, other twentysomethings, dealt with the excitment and disappointment of being twentysomething.