Planning: Day 5

Song of the day: Bad Self Portraits by Lake Street Dive

I had a moment when I was standing in my bathroom at my parents’ house in my underwear, a tank top, and a plaid shirt, with my thick-rimmed glasses and my hair up in a bun, brushing my teeth because I can’t afford another filling anytime soon, laughing hysterically at an Avengers joke on the tumblr app on my phone and I thought, “This is literally the most millennial I can be.” Now, I’m not living at home because I can’t find a job (I’m stationed out here for the summer as a part of my job with outreach at the planetarium), but other than that, I cannot think of any way that I could cram another stereotype into that scenario, unless I tweeted a vine of it.

I’ve been a lot of a millennial lately. I’ve been a lot of the target market female. Oh, sure, I have my quirks, but like a lot of my generation, I’ve redefined myself in a surprisingly standard way. I think it’s good to have a healthy balance between the “I’m a unique flower” story and the “I’m just like everyone else” story. Because you’re not like everyone else. You are, uniquely, you, and to say that you’re like everyone else is to diminish every other person’s experience (because you’re really saying that everyone else is like you). At the same time, other people out there are guaranteed to share some of your likes, your dislikes, your style, your cares, your experiences. The trick, I think, is to find friends who both enrich your life experience but are also able to squee with you when RDJ calls Chris Evans “dorito.” Or whatever it is that delights your soul.

And I think that’s a lesson that I lost, that balance idea. For the longest time, I thought I had a DESTINY, that we all had our own unique destinies, and that these destinies were these fixed things. Sure, the choices that you made led to that destiny, but there was a right and a wrong here. Pick the wrong thing and you’re doomed to unhappiness in a cubicle. There is a right and a wrong and your soul will suffer if you don’t pick the vocation that makes your heart take flight, no matter what problems or difficulties that vocation may bring. 

We’re a generation of self-starters, I think. It’s easier to be a freelancer or to start your own business or to make something and put it out there on the internet. If it’s quality, if the work you do is good, then people will find it and you’ll be able to make a living out of it. Well, if you have the advantages and then the determination to make such a thing happen. Those are our heroes, you know? The people who make something of themselves. And I’m happy to make something of myself. But I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here.

Because the thing that makes my soul sing, I think, is helping other people. And at the same time that there are phenomenal ways of giving of our means and our time online, there are also physical structures out in the world with that same purpose and I work better in structure. I don’t want to hide behind it. I don’t want to pretend like there isn’t another way, a way that can often be better. But I know a little bit about myself and I did well at school because I excel in an environment that’s structured like that. Not everyone does, which is an education rant for another day, but since I do thrive in a structured environment, why wouldn’t I seek that out, especially when I can find places that do good within their organizational structure? 

Apathy is in these days, and bitter resignation, and suspicious pessimism. And that’s fair. I understand. Not caring is cool and I can see why that would be. But I have to step out of that. I can’t exist like that and be happy. I have to throw myself at a cause, give myself to something, do my best to make a difference in the world in the ways that I can. The days I spend on the couch eat at me. The absurdly high number of hours I have spent watching Netflix worries me. The longer I sit, the harder it is to stand and I desperately need to stand. We all do, I think, but I know that I will be unhappy and lost if I stay the way I am. 

I don’t need to save the world. 

But I don’t need to just watch it either.