9/10/23

Welcome back. 

Within the past few weeks, I've been struggling, in a sense, to figure out what I should do next. 

A week ago today, I quit my restaurant job. I want to emphasize I am a good worker. When it comes to people of my age, I am very hardworking, I do what I signed up for. However, I do what I sign up for, and I am not the kind of person to suffer in a minimum-wage job that serves zero purpose in my life other than money, and the second I start sensing that my work ethic is going to be taken advantage of, I will leave. Part of this I believe is due to my attitude towards money, despite being far from well-off financially, I'm smart about the money I have and have enough saved that, if I can't find a job or am not working right now, I will still be able to make rent and pay for things, partly from loans, and partly from how much of every check I put into my savings. The other part is I just dont value money as an object enough to force myself into a miserable situation just to afford more of what I already have saved up enough to afford if that makes sense. I'm privileged to have this attitude, I know there are a lot of people who keep jobs they hate because they actually need the money, and for most of my teen and, so far, adult life, that has been the position I've been in. However, after the first and second jobs, I began and quit after a month of working there, I have decided to focus the energy spent at a job on my academics. The last job I had I was able to keep for over a year because, as a work study, I was able to focus on my job and school at the same time, however, I have had to face the hard truth that I am not really someone who's very good at splitting my time, and if I work all day, even if I'm off by 4:00 PM, it's very hard for me to switch from the exhaustion of working, to the motivation of getting my homework done. I am also very aware I will begin sending applications for internships sooner rather than later, and I struggle to find a reason to suffer in a job, make minimum wage, only do it to afford material things, and have to quit within the next few months anyway, especially if it takes away from school. Fashion, as an overly populated industry especially in recent years, also comes with a lot of competition, and considering the amount of objectively unqualified influencers in positions others had to go through schooling to achieve, the pressure, for me, is very much on. With that, comes an undying desire to prove my abilities. I know I am far from the most talented person in my major, and I am also getting to the point where I am starting to be older than others in the industry, especially because of the aforementioned influencer pandemic, so I take my academics pretty seriously. Thus, if my job is distracting me from that, as much as it admittedly hurts to not have a job, the decision is made quite easily. All of this is to say that I don't know what my next move should be. As much as I want to focus on school, I also don't want to not be working. I know it isn't abnormal to not work in college, especially as a full-time student, but I am also someone who just thinks a lot, and with most of my other friends having and maintaining jobs with no problem, I become hard on myself for not being able to do as much as they do. 

I recently watched a video that definitely struck a chord with me, and has been on my mind at least once a day since I saw it. It was a video of a woman, crying, about how weird she feels being herself. The inability to converse with others the way we see everyone else doing it, the lack of motivation to do things we want to do, the constant feeling of intruding on things you're expected to be a part of. I will be the first to say my mental health is not an excuse for me, as much as I say I am too anxious to do something, I am too sad to do that, I'm too this or that or the other thing, those instances are just factual and me recognizing my body, but when it comes to things like jobs, like school, things I fully understood before signing up for, I will not use my thought to get around it. That being said, in the past two or so years, I've noticed myself struggling with things like that a lot more than I remember I used to. I'm terrible at making, or even worse, at maintaining friendships, and I'm not sure why. Most, and by most I mean all but one, of my classes, are on a separate campus from the one I live on, and the one most of my previous classes have been on, and originally I was very excited about this. The potential to meet all new people and experience a whole new campus, and for the most part, that excitement persists, however, it's becoming abundantly clear that I don't necessarily belong on that campus. That thought process is both one I consistently try to process as irrational and one that consumes a good portion of my thoughts throughout the day. But after sitting in classes all day watching everyone introduce themselves to each other and I sit alone until the seats at my table are the only ones left, I either need to accept that I need to become more extraverted, which has never really been the case from me, or I need to accept and react accordingly to being someone others don't feel comfortable approaching. Regardless of the cause, the past week or so has resulted in a lot of self reflection about my goals: for school; for my personal life; for my work life. Which is why I'm back! I still stand by most of the articles and essays I wrote over the summer will slow down, as I can start using my academic papers for that and fully use this as my writing portfolio, but I miss the blog. I miss posting "new blog! link in bio :)" every Sunday, I miss media of the week, but most of all I miss writing! I feel especially in school so much of my writing is stuff I wouldn't choose to write about, as is the natural order of schooling, and I don't want to let that do what required reading did to me in High School. 

At this point in my life, I dont really know what the next step is, and that stresses me out, but what I do is that I do really love this blog. I love talking about it with people, I love getting texts saying "hey I read your blog this week, you have some cool ideas!", I love the bond I have with other people doing similar things, and I don't want to give that up; at least not any time soon.

Media this week is "A Quick One Before the Eternal Worm Devours Connecticut" by Have a Nice Life from their "Deathconciousness" album. I've loved that album for like a year now, I know I've posted it on my Instagram story but I never brought to the blog! I also watched Devil Wears Prada again recently and that movie is honestly most likely responsible for a lot of the panic Ive been experiencing. That and the fucking retrograde that I don't even want to give the energy to talk about. I hope this post serves as some kind of discussion, maybe one of my friends feels similarly and just hasnt said it out loud. The last media Ill leave with is Season 1, Episode 6 of Fleabag:

"And everyone feels like this a little bit and they're just not talking about it, or I am completely fucking alone"

Love

~Christian Reid