The day before yesterday, I went to Ash’s going away party, which was both incredibly fun and incredibly exhausting. Fun because I love Ash and I got to see a bunch of her other friends who I get along with quite well. Exhausting because I had spent six hours at work just before getting to the party and by that point I was running purely on autopilot.

Even though a part of me just wanted to go home and crawl into bed, the rest of me got off a bit on getting to watch myself be so social on such a small amount of fuel. I talked to people at the party for four hours straight (including an especially fraught conversation about men and feminism which I might write a different post about later) and I was able to spin some embarrassing mishaps (such as splashing a bit of White Claw onto another girls’ sweater) into funny moments. This success also made me realize that I don’t need to worry so much about social interactions; my instincts seem to serve me just fine when I let them take over.

After the party, I caught a ride in an Uber with Ash’s friend Di and her other friend Chanel. The Uber ride ended up being an hour long due to traffic and thunderstorms and the three of us talked the whole way. The conversation was glittery and sharp, but my brain felt fuzzy despite how quick my replies came. Chanel and I left the Uber and took the train together because we lived along the same route.

When I’ve decided it’s time for me to leave a party, the last thing I want to find out is that someone who is also leaving at the same time is taking the same train as me. The only exception to this rule is if the person is someone I’m infatuated with. If I’m not trying to get someone to kiss me, all I want at the end of the night is to sit on the train with my earbuds in and listen to Death Grips or some sad indie music. There is nothing less appealing than trying to make conversation with someone you don’t know very well and aren’t attracted to at 2am in an empty subway car. Although it was only about 9:30 when Chanel and I got on the train and the subway car wasn’t empty, I think that getting off the subway without having had my earbuds snugly in my ears blasting whatever the fuck for even a single second directly contributed to my current state of unwellness.

To be clear, I wouldn’t take it back. I think those extra moments together may have turned Chanel and Di into real friends instead of just friends of a friend and I am always grateful to have more friends. In the future, however, I will be much more careful to not be so open about exactly which train I’m taking until I know more information about which trains everyone else is taking and I can be strategic about my exit.

Honestly, I don’t mind being sick. Being sick is pretty much the only way I can ever lay in bed all day without feeling guilty. I have a bad habit (as most people do) of saying vicious things to myself when I feel like I’m not accomplishing enough. Being sick is almost like a medal that says, “good job, you worked yourself so hard you made yourself sick!” Calling out of work and getting to lay in bed binge watching ridiculous Netflix originals and YouTube video essays is my reward for winning that medal.

The show I ended up watching all day yesterday was Partner Track. I am a huge sucker for anything cheesy and romantic, so of course I was going to watch it. The show is fun, but that is pretty much all it is. Most of the acting is terrible and the dialogue feels like it was ripped straight of a chronically online, liberal millennial’s Twitter feed of hot takes. The characters themselves are pretty unlikeable, mostly because of their moral hypocrisy. The show seems to treat cheating as a sloppy behavioral quirk rather than the serious betrayal it is and its attempts at social commentary, while admirable, come across as shoe-horned and insincere. The only two characters I found likeable were Z, the environmental crusader, and Justin, the paralegal.

I have pages worth of thoughts on the show, but it wouldn’t really be worth my time to put them all down or worth yours to read them, so I will refrain. The one good thing about the show is that it was comforting to see people approaching thirty and still not knowing what the hell to do with themselves. It makes being almost twenty four and feeling completely lost seem less like the end of the world.

I think the sickness I’m experiencing has more to do with the fact that I feel like my life is spiraling out of control than it does with a virus. Spoiler alert: I have not been doing any of the things I said I would do in “On Productivity.”

The sneezing is just seasonal allergies. The horrible panic I’m feeling is a mixture of existential dread, burnout, and depression. I’ve become disillusioned with my work at the coffee shop, and thinking about having to go to the boxing gym to stand behind a desk and roll hand wraps for six hours every Friday makes me fantasize about getting pushed onto the train tracks. I was warming up to the service industry, but it’s all starting to feel a little too Sisyphean for my tastes. All I want to do when I get done with work is sleep and I can barely force myself to eat anything. Even food from my favorite restaurants has started to taste like cold, unseasoned tofu.

My persistent headache started yesterday, but I think I’ve made it worse by oversleeping and wallowing. The only worthwhile things I’ve managed to do between today and yesterday are change my bed sheets and do two loads of laundry. I haven’t left the house all day and I haven’t applied for any jobs. I still haven’t done my taxes. It’s 5pm and I haven’t left the house once. All of this is making me want to finally read My Year of Rest and Relaxation, but I think that book might just enable me.

What I really need is a change. Something big and dramatic that will wake me up from this haze. Every time I think of something to do that might excite or inspire me–going to a movie, taking a pole dancing class, going away for a bit–the notion is crushed by the reminder of all the debt I have to pay off. Anything that costs money is a non starter unless I want to make my financial anxiety worse (which can sometimes be a fun self harm tactic if I’m really down in the dumps). The free things I feel tempted by often become unappealing because of the sheer amount of time and energy they require.

I think one of my big problems is that I am trying to figure out what I should do next in the short term without having fully decided what I want in the long term. No decision I make about what job to apply for is going to make me feel like I’m going in the right direction if I don’t even know what the right direction is.

Sometimes, I wish I was like my friends who have always known that they want to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professions that come with a pre-made life plan. I’ve always known that I wanted to be a writer, but the path to getting there has never been clear. I had other career aspirations as well, but they changed with every person (real or fictional) who I fell in love with. I read Percy Jackson and the Olympians and wanted to be an architect because that was Annabeth Chase’s dream. Later, in college, I wanted to study International Relations because of a captivating boy I met at freshman orientation. I’ve wanted to be a fashion designer, an astronaut, a teacher, a cowgirl (still not sure if this is a real career), a psychologist, and many, many other things.

If I was smart, I would have either fully pursued writing with the viciousness of someone whose life depended on being able to entertain an easily bored king with their words, or I would have chosen a “smart” career and saved the writing for later. Instead of doing either, I felt compelled to choose a major that wasn’t writing, but was still something I was passionate about. Why not writing? I honestly don’t know. Maybe it felt to me like getting a degree in running or speaking. Sure, a class here or there might help, but a full for years seemed excessive. Writing, to me, is mostly about just doing the thing and either people like it or they don’t.

I chose Environmental Studies because I care about the environment and it seemed like the major would at least help me learn some things that I couldn’t learn on my own. I’m still not sure if that was the case. I am pretty sure that most 18-20 year-olds are in no position to be deciding what subject is worth spending $70,000 a year to learn about. I wish that just one person would have sat me down and said, “Look, Scarlett, you’re an idiot for moving away and going to an out-of-state school and taking on all of this debt. But if you’re going to do it anyway (and I know you will because you’re stubborn and really don’t want to live in the Midwest anymore), at least major in something that will get you a nice, cushy job when you graduate.”

When I think about all of the poor decisions I made in college because of how mixed up my priorities were, I would go back and shake myself, hard. Maybe even slap myself around a little bit. Since time travel is (at least for me) impossible, I am going to go to have to forgive myself for being young and stupid and try to move on with my life. There might even be parts of that stupidity that I can’t see the value of now but will be grateful for in the future.

As for what I’m going to do next? Well, first, I’m going to start with what I want my life to look like. I want to be able to write a lot, to travel, to do martial arts, to learn different languages, to read, to learn to dance, to fall in love, to afford an apartment on my own, to basically do whatever I want when I want without having to explain myself to anyone or worry about money. To have that life probably means being a successful author. In order to be a successful author, I need to write as much as possible. In order to write as much as possible, I need a job that let’s me keep relatively normal hours so I’m not exhausted all of the time and I can see my friends.

I have a bad habit of wanting to have everything and wanting to have it now. I want to be good at violin, but I can’t be good at violin in a couple of years when I’ve established myself in my career and actually have time to practice, I need to be good at it now. I know this is utterly stupid, but I have this feeling that if I don’t accomplish all of these things while I’m still young and hot, I won’t be able to properly enjoy them. Maybe it’s because of society or because I’ve read too many romance novels about hot successful people. Who knows. Either way, I have to snap out of it.

Right now, my only two priorities are going to be finding a job that pays well, and writing. I will also allow myself to spend my time on learning to cook new recipes because I just got a bunch of new vegan cookbooks and a Ninja instant pot/slow-cooker/air-fryer/dehydrator/yogurt-maker that I need to take out for a spin. Martial arts can stay too, because I know I’ll go crazy without it. Learning to draw well, getting better at French and Japanese, practicing violin more–all of it can wait until I no longer feel like my life is falling apart.

I just got a lead on a job from my friend Iya’s that seems promising, so I am going to try and apply for that and hope it gets me going in the right direction. I called out of work for tomorrow as well, just to be on the safe side, but I’m starting to feel better already.

My advice (which should be taken with a grain of salt), to anyone who is going through a similar post-college, post-pandemic, post-service job crisis of faith, is to come up with a plan. Even if the plan is a bit half baked, just figure out what you need your day-to-day life to look like so that you’re not fucking miserable and then make a plan to get there. Treat that plan like your Bible/Koran/Torah/Communist Manifesto and follow it until it either works or something changes and you are forced to make a new plan. Whatever you do, don’t mope around aimlessly and don’t start questioning yourself in the middle of the plan. Believe that the plan will work. Until it does, at the very least, you can walk around in your current circumstances feeling smug because you’ve got a plan and you know you won’t be there for very long. Also, watch Struthless on YouTube. I swear those videos will help you.

Now let’s see if I can follow my own advice.

Thanks for reading.

XX Scarlett