Down the Rabbit Hole.

On December 16 2013 it will be two years since I graduated college, and I’m still astounded by how much I changed in such a short period of time.

I graduated a semester early so at the end of winter break when all my friends were going back I felt incredibly lost. The experience always reminded me that scene in “Alice in Wonderland” when she falls through the rabbit hole, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, with no concept of what is up or down. She can’t see the bottom, she can’t see the top, and has nothing to hold on to. That’s what graduating felt like for me. I couldn’t go back, I couldn’t stop myself from falling and I sure as hell couldn’t see what was waiting for me.

After the initial anxiety passed and I made some tough but much needed decisions I reminded myself of what happens next in the movie, she gets to Wonderland. And it’s crazy and nonsensical but it also, for lack of a better term, wonderful. Filled with fantastic things that are new and curious. For somebody who was so keen on living adventures and seeing the world the prospect of Wonderland is like waiting for Christmas morning.

I can’t say I’ve figured out this new land and I’m confortable with it and the new rules, but I’m having a great time finding out, meeting people (some mad, some madder) and finding out about myself.

So maybe I found it accidentally, maybe it was where I was headed all along, but finding Wonderland is so worth throwing yourself down the rabbit hole.

M.

something Good for something Great

   I feel like I talk a lot about my job lately, but being in the office (or work related things) from 9am-6pm everyday (and sometimes on the weekends) there's rarely other things in my life worth talking about. (Which is sad.. I know, I know.)

  What has been swirling in my mind lately is how often I get job "offers" while doing things for the job I currently have. I get to meet very interesting and influential people who somehow fall for my smoke and mirror tricks of thinking I'm a competent young professional.  I've been offered "job security" here and there, and one particular gentleman has jokingly placed bids on my future salary with my boss over a couple drinks.

  I'm aware that those are not official job offers and I'd be stupid to jump into any conclusions from these simple matter of fact statements. At the same time, though, people don't need to say those things to me, and I'm tempted to find that there is something true in those words, that they'd at least pay a little more attention to my resume if I decided to send it in.

  But then I remind myself that I'm leaving for London in 15 months to pursue my dream of living there and getting my master's, which is what I've wanted forever. I don't want to accept an awesome job that I'll have to quit shortly just because I have something awesomer (sorry, I know) coming along.

  In the confused mental state that will last all of my 20s (and probably continue from there on) it is a hard choice to be faced with, specially in the occasions when things at my current job aren't as pleasant as I'd like them to be, and my novelty seeking personally is already yearning for a new city and new faces.

 It would be great if all the world's problems were as terrible as my own.

But I'm interested to know, how often do you guys have to give up something good for something you know is better, specially when that thing might be in the not so near future?

M.

Doing it anyways...

   So it's no secret that one of my favorite blogs is All Groan Up, it is funny, insightful and just plain old good read. I was particularly chuffed when I learned Paul (who follows me on twitter, cough cough) was releasing his book, 101 Secrets for your Twenties.

   It was particularly great to see that he had set up a contest for his readers to become part of the book, submitting their own secret that either got them through their twenties or is helping them now. So I wrote something.

   In all fairness, maybe "wrote" is putting it nicely, I jotted something down and sent over, without thinking too much about it. I find that my best writing comes out as "mind-vomit", and I can ruin a text like nobody's business by overediting and over thinking the main idea. I have no expectations to be published or even picked as the top 100 of all the submissions  because of the lack of effort I put into it. But I did it anyways, because I love to write, and would have done it even if this contest didn't exist at all.

   So that's the topic for today, boys and girls, not what have you done lately that you expected no results, but why did you do it anyways?

M.