You know, I think i’ve made clear my absolute disdain for this god foresaken city. I think I’ve made clear also, that i have no idea where i see myself in five years. I used to know this answer. It was, about a year ago, quite clear in my mind what i was going to do. I moved down here to be amongst the twenty-somethings who think they’re too good for everyone else because they’re a staff ass for congressman nobody from the 10th district of [insert state here] which consists of nothing but the middle of nowhere. I was determined to work for Vermont. I came close too. I was one of the top 3 choices for a staff ass position with the Judiciary committee chairman on the Senate side in January. When i didn’t get the job, my heart was shattered. I had no idea what to do, where to go, it seemed that my perfect career that i had set up so well in my mind was now lost and gone forever.
Now that I’ve met a ton of those 20 somethings who think they’re hot shit because they work for someone who’s “hot shit” even if no one outside their puny office in Rayburn would know his face or name, I don’t want to be among them. I don’t want to think I’m on top of the world for giving tours to whining 10 year olds four times a day in April because it’s spring break season. I don’t want to be one of those staffers that gets wasted five nights/week because they need to to forget about how horrible their pay and their job is. I don’t want to hang around those people.
But now i don’t know what i want to do. For five years, i set myself up for a career in public policy. Hell, I concentrated in it. Public policy and administration. I interned in 3 distinguished offices – one in the US Senate in Boston, one in the US House of Reps in DC and one in the MA State Senate. But because I’ve decided that I’m not quite as cut out for that bid’ness now that i’m out of the politics realm, it doesn’t change my love of policy but what do i do with that?
I’ve recently decided, that while i once used to write often, i never thought i wrote particularly well. I still don’t think so, but a few friends have decided that you know, if you love it, just go for it.
So this brings me to the great move of 2008. Happening, sometime in 2008. Boyfriend and I are hoping to get the eff out of this horrid city. Get away from the stifling humidity, the 80 degree autumn weather in OCTOBER, the people, the tourists, just…everything. But we’re conflicted. He wants to go to CT. I want to go back to Boston. He doesn’t know what he’d do in Boston, while I don’t know what i’d do in CT. It’s a battle, but we’re going to help each other out in ways we can. It was just frustrating because he kept asking me “what do you want to do” and i just….I don’t know. It evolved into me crying because i don’t know if i want to apply for teach for america, it crossed my mind once or twice in college and i figure now’s as good of time as any, I don’t know if i want to go to law school because i don’t know if another $100k in loans is worth it when i don’t even know if i want to practice law. I just…don’t know. I guess the one thing that i’m certain of is that I just…don’t want to be an administrative assistant for the rest of my life which i fear is going to happen if I stay in DC too long.
But i felt a bit better after talking to him because maybe, moving back north is an opportunity for me to get a job in journalism, to begin working on some fantastic novel, or something of the sort. Plan A didn’t work out so well, but i got a great boyfriend and a puppy far too cute for words out of it, and a few good friends so i can’t complain too too much.
i hate this quarterlife crisis-y stuff. If only because when i think about it, and my lack of direction, i cry. I cried last night and i still feel like i could cry a lot more. I don’t want to hold us back. I don’t want to hold him back, after all he’s the one that has some semblance of a career going for him. I just wish i had some remote idea that i knew – concretely knew, bottom of soul this is what i want to spend the next fifty years doing know…what i want to do. But i don’t and I know a lot of people will say “you’re only 24 you don’t need to know…” yadda yadda yadda,….but i WANT to so i can start working towards something. So we can save money to get married and move to new england and buy a house sometime in this lifetime. I want these things but i also want to feel like I…got a degree thats worth something. That all the hard work and tears, and accomplishments I saw over those five years are worth something…anything. Thats kind of half the problem. *sigh* i hate this crap.
Ahhh the quarter life crisis. I need to not let it get me down so much and just live my life *sigh*
