Nearly two weeks after my college graduation my head is pounding with uncertainty. After one door closes, another one opens. Exactly. College door closes and unemployment office door opens. After one thing is over, another thing just pops up; now that my papers and deadlines are laid to rest, another worry is born. My Mom agrees that yut-yang me yoon, yut yang oh, which means that hardships come one after another/they overlap. My Dad discourages me; he is certain that I won't find a job: "yew mut ho gong ahng-nee la?" which means what good jobs would await you? He insists that I should find a job at Merill Lynch or enroll in a trade school and fix refrigerators. He says that everyone needs a refrigerator so I won't ever be without a job.
My grand plan is to move out of my parents' apartment and live on my own. This separation anxiety should be enough to impel me into the "real world," where I can fully be independent and be self-sustaining. I have been gifted nearly everything in my entire life since the day I was born, so I believe that moving out would be my first big risk. I suppose having an apartment of my own would allow me to plan my life without structuring it around my parents and heeding their expectations (curfew, no friends over, no sleepovers, etc./Tiger Mom shit). I would also have to work maybe two jobs and discard my social life for a while to pay the skyrocketing rent price, or settle for a roach-infested apartment/sublet. Breaking free is key: I can host parties once a month and invite my friends over. I can also let acquaintances crash in my apartment if they need a place to stay and I can also decorate my room freely and alter traditional feng shui.
Most desirably, I can live out my hipster lifestyle by patronizing Whole Foods and eat from their $8.99 per pound hot buffet, I can also stay out extra late and explore NYC. I can play my guitar as loud as I want and I can also turn my room into a recording studio and my bathroom into a darkoom. I can't achieve this. This is when my cabbie/friend Shawn would bark at me, "I hate that shit (people who say they can't); you CAN, you can do whatever you want to." He's right; if I keep telling myself I can't, I will be self-fulfilling and self-defeating. ...I CAN....
"I feel like I'm at crossroads," says my homegirl. During our rekindling we wiped the dew from each other's eyes and served each other a spoonful of reality. We both agree that we are in the middle of nowhereness where our decisions are lying dormant, but they will be made in time. We are both unsure of what we want to do. She is suddenly twisting out of math education and opting for biology education with hopes for Mt. Sinai. As we sat on the ledge of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater we discerned the difference between our past and our future.
Before I go to sleep I wonder what the hell I will do the next day and how I will waste it doing absolutely nothing like walking around the pitiful Union Square and sitting in Starbucks trying to dream up a breakout novel that will make me famous. I look at every other New Yorker/hipster and scoff at their notebooks lined with ink and scattered with pens marks, envious that they are probably near the end of their fiction novel. I don't even have inspiration to write my novel anymore and I have slimmed down to dry short stories that I start but never seem to finish.
In the shower I let the water run down my body and I imagine myself in there forever, not having to do anything else but just remain in there, safe, secure, warm, unchanging.
The white noise of my uncertain future rumbles in my head like the dead channels of a television that is not hooked up to a digital converter box. I have not received my physical paper diploma which I have always ridiculed as purchaseable and printable. I have not received my yearbook and I do not know of when I will receive it or if I will ever receive it at all. This uncertainty is not what overwhelms me, but it is uncertainty of finding a job that frustrates me. It is the notion of applying for any and all jobs (except Starbucks or McDonalds, though they are not similar to each other) that complicates things; it is the faint idea of taking/accepting any and all jobs that frustrates me even more. I know that I can't settle, but do I really have a choice, at all? It is not as if I actually had jobs lined up, but this is exactly because I do not try (My homegirl tells me, Just try dude! You never know until you try!). I only submitted one resume to Shakespeare and Co. The B&N, J.Crew, Starbucks are lottery-based, Pam told me. This disheartened me even more because I was just another number in the machine. Finding a job is simply the focus of my summer because future employers will look at how long "I took off" after I graduated. I don't want my hiatus to be a glaring pimple on my resume. It is equally difficult for me to find a stable, lucrative job because for me, I don't want to invest myself 100% into any job unless it is in the field of art (not lucrative, unless I am big major celeb), therefore if I work at any job I will end up half-assing myself and I will be fired; this will blemish my record and hinder future opportunities. In a way I don't want to work because it's just easier not having to work and continue being supplied oxygen by my own two parents who haven given me everything, repeat, given me everything.
Sometimes I wonder what Linda sounds like in real life. It has been five years since we first "met" each other online. We've only seen each other once--she saw me at McDonald's 25th Avenue and she always penned me as Shyann's lover. I wonder if Linda has a devotion that is similar to my homegirl's devotion. I always wonder what her tone of voice is like in real life and if her consideration for me is as strong as she sounds online. It is interesting to imagine the voice and then matching it with her real life persona and aura. I await hanging out with Linda to understand her presence. For now the instant messages we send each other are an imaginative way of being friends and having a lifeline to each other when the rest of the world seems at bay.
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