Thanks for deciding to read what is certainly going to be a shit show of a blog. Hopefully, this will all get better soon. Before I get into the really juicy bits of why I’ve decided to try to romanticize my life to a bunch of strangers on the internet, I have a confession to make: Scarlett Sharpe is not my real name. I’m not going to tell you what my real name is, I just want you to know that it isn’t Scarlett Sharpe.

Can you blame me for wanting to keep my identity a secret? I write erotica and I don’t make very much money doing it (yet). I’m in my mid-twenties and I have a college degree, but I’m working as a barista. To be fair, my degree is basically in tree hugging and the economy sucks right now, but it’s still hard not to feel like a loser.

Sometimes, I think I should cut my losses and get out of New York before the rent increases suck me dry, but every time I go to a different city or visit my family in an unspecified location in the Midwest, I just feel like there’s something missing. Nowhere else feels as real to me as New York.

On paper, it’s incredibly stupid. I’m drowning in student loan debt. I could be working at a coffee shop while living with my parents and saving money. I could be dicking around trying to be a writer (or find a career that can support my writing) with a gigantic cushy safety net underneath me. I’m incredibly lucky to even have that option available to me and here I am shitting all over it. There must be something wrong with me.

Honestly, I know what’s wrong with me. New York is what’s wrong with me. I love the subway; I love the men peeing onto the street in broad daylight; I love the construction workers I see on my walk to work at 5:30 in the morning; I love the rats that run over my boots when I stumble home from the bar in the middle of the night; I love sparring with the weirdos in my amateur boxing group. I know I’m just a dumb (dirty) blond transplant from the Midwest with no real claim on this place, but I can’t bear to leave it.

I could complain about these things to people I know, but most of my complaints would come across as embarrassingly out of touch considering how many people have it so much worse than me and are still somehow managing to make more responsible decisions. Since I want to keep my friends and stay in my co-workers’ good graces, I am going to document my *struggles* and record my inner monologues here, where they can be found by other burnt-out wannabe intellectuals and Red Scare podcast listeners.

Right now, my most pressing issue is my utter lack of progress towards any semblance of a stable career. I’ve had my living situation explode in my face at least a few times a year since I’ve begun living in New York and although my current roommates are lovely, I’ve decided that living alone is what I need to not feel like my life might fall apart at any moment. Every cell in my body threatens to mutate when confronted with the possibility of living the corporate lifestyle, but it’s looking like I’m going to have to sell out if I want to afford an apartment on my own. Right now, I’m manically applying for nebulous consulting jobs while trying to convince myself that if I pull up my business girl pants for just a couple of years, I can spend the rest of my life being a frivolous bohemian.

The second most pressing issue in my life is the love triangle I’ve accidentally wandered into. This triangle involves two customers at work, one of whom is two years older than me, the other of whom is twenty (ish) years older than me. I’ve spent a long time focusing on the stuff going on in my head and not the stuff going on in front of my face, so it’s been a while since I’ve truly dated. My goal right now is to keep things casual with as many people as I feel like keeping things casual with and wait to do anything more serious until I can choose the right person from my roster. I’m really not trying to be some kind of female manipulator. I’m just trying to be smart about dating, so I don’t end up giving my heart to someone who’s going to rip it out and nail it to their wall.

All the potential pathways I have open to me in the form of career options and romantic prospects have been leaving me paralyzed with indecision. I want to try everything, but I know I can’t have it all forever. What I’ve realized is that I have opposite trajectories for my career and dating life. With my career, I need to just fucking choose something and stick with it. What I choose doesn’t really matter; I just need to stick with it and I’ll end up with way more options and freedom later (aka, when I have money). In my romantic life, I don’t need to choose or commit to anything. In fact, I actually need to avoid committing for a while so that I can make an educated decision about who I want to spend the rest of my life with.

In the background of all of this white-collar angst, I’m still going to be trying my best to make it as a writer and jack of all trades style artist, so I’m going to dump all of that stuff on this blog. If you’re interested in hearing about my love life (which is distinctly less exciting than any of the erotic stories I’ve written), and hearing my thoughts on stuff I may or may not be qualified to talk about, please follow along. Hopefully, I’ll have some art to upload soon for those of you who aren’t a fan of long-winded blog posts.

Thanks for reading.

XX Scarlett