Drinking Habits of a 24-year-old

It’s Sunday morning and I’m not hungover.

Not even a little bit.

When did everyone start drinking craft beer at parties? When did they start caring about IPA’s versus lagers? Where the hell did all the everclear-laden pink panty droppers and date-rape drinks go? I swear, I drink beer to sober up after a long night of boozing. Beer is just bready water after all (or watery bread?). 4% alcohol? Pshawww. That’s like my shampoo…

These days, my friends pop Advil like it’s their job the morning after a rough night. They chug water, lie in bed, and moan about not being 18 anymore. Really, guys? Weak.

I guess my semi-small stature prevents me from consuming especially large quantities of any type of liquid, but I do think I’m better equipped to handle alcohol than the average 5’3 female. In four years of college, I never once vommed mid-party. But now, with everyone around me acting all subdued, I don’t want to be the wacked out drunk girl doing shots from 3-year-old bottles of Jaeger.

So, I sip my chilled beer calmly and engage in pseudo-intellectual conversation with skinny-jean-be-clad hipsters. I’m enjoying myself, sure, it’s just that now it’s in a mature, dare I say, adult manner? I guess a diminished alcohol tolerance is just one of the many signs that I’m finally starting to grow up.

It's GO Time!

Today is the last day of my first job. So, it’s the end of an era, really.

I feel like there should be some sort of graduation ceremony with speeches, buckets of bubbly, and a wild party to cap off my accomplishments and carry me through to the next phase of my professional life.

Everything comes to an end (duh). And I tend to like the idea of endings because they are expected and inevitable. But change is scary. It seems like everything I know about my life right now is falling apart like some doomed relationship in an Adele ballad, and I’m just moronically forging ahead hoping to find something different, better, best.

I am quick to fall into a stable routine and I’ve never been the type to disrupt the status quo. But I've gone and done it.

As huge as this feels, I have to keep reminding myself that leaving your first job is expected and normal and frankly pretty mundane in the grand scheme of things. I’m happy, and healthy, and employed. I have wonderful friends, and great coworkers, and family members who support me no matter what.

This transition is a bit daunting now because I’m right in the thick of it all, but as things mellow out, I know I’ll be happy with my decision. Life is pretty simple, after all. Just do what you love.

Wherefore Art Thou Romeo?

I forget what it feels like to be in love and I want so badly to be reminded.

I have a vague recollection of yearning; so much want and need and a heightened awareness of my being. Like a homunculus come to life – all lips and hands and overly sensitive private parts.

And I want that again.

I want more than a casual crush on a coworker who smells like herbal outdoors and cracks Dilbert jokes by the water cooler.

I want more than a lustful fling who’s all touch and no talk and leaves me breathless but confused.

I want more than a convenient companion – someone you fool yourself into believing you’re in love with just because it would be so easy.

No, I want that can’t-talk, can’t-breathe, forget-how-to-act-like-a-normal-human-being kind of all encompassing love. Thanks Disney for making me believe that exists. Can I just go to sleep for a decade or two until some hot guy who owns the kingdom wakes me up with a kiss?

When my parents interact, I see something rare. I see love wrapped up in friendship with a dash of passion. They found each other young and grew together and somehow, against all odds, made it last. If they could do it over again, I know they’d tread the same path, retracing their steps. Because they are part of the lucky few who found earth-shattering love and guard it, cherish it, and appreciate it every day.

I’m exhausted by my own ambivalence.

I'm Stupid When I'm Single

I’ve never really been good at acting like a normal, functioning adult when I’m boyfriend-less, but lately, let me just say - UGHH I HATE SINGLE ME.

Single me does stupid stuff for attention. Single me wants every weekend night to become an awesome story, or a better-than-average blog post, or a fogged over memory of epic-ness. Single me encourages my friends to booty call randos they don’t really like just so I can live vicariously through their drunken, horned-up exploits. It’s not that single me can’t have sexploits of her own, but single me has to be careful. Single me doesn’t want to get a reputation or anything.

Single me wakes up with a hangover at 2 pm with an entire Sunday gone and a craving for Shake Shack that borders on desperation. Single me looks like a hot mess after a night of partying and passing out in my bed with a made-up face and lips swollen from making out with someone I don’t remember. Ok, confession – I just don’t want to remember. Single me prays to black out and misremember a night but usually, thanks to an ever-climbing alcohol tolerance, single me’s adventures just get blurry around the edges – like an instagrammed snapshot of the evening. Only worse.

Single me awakes to an iphone crammed with texts from worried friends – did you get home ok? How did your night end up? I'm fine guys. I'm always fine. Single me looks at the old family pictures on her bedroom wall shamefully, wondering if she’s dishonored the lineage. Single me shuffles blearily into a kitchen of pregamed chaos. Limes and sticky solo cups lining the counters and chairs in disarray. Single me drunk-eats leftovers at 3 am if she doesn’t make a stop at jumbo slice first. Single me eats jumbo slice. Although, come to think of it, non-single me eats jumbo slice from time to time too.

Single me is the worst version of me. She’s the one who drunk dials ex-boyfriends in the middle of the night just to hear a familiar voice even if she regrets it the next day. She’s the one who thoughtlessly gives her parents cause for concern. She’s the one who favors reckless decisions over rational ones.

So, despite the outrageous amounts of fun that single me has, it is certainly time to become non-single me. I can’t take much more of this.

Hello, Goodbye

Who says goodbye for real anymore?

Aside from the ultimate au revoir, death, humans are just too technologically connected these days to lose touch completely. A goodbye is only a see-you-later, not a see-you-never.

But what about when both parties know that it has to be the end? It has to be. For the sake of everyone involved. It can be healthy to completely cut yourself off from the past now and then, right?

Sure, paths cross unexpectedly and a random 3 AM drunk text can be the grape-scented glue stick weakly binding two individuals together, but the final goodbye lingers. It’s been formally announced and acknowledged and the gavel’s been pounded.

So why is a goodbye still so hard to accept?

Maybe it’s just me, and I don’t know how to do goodbyes, but in the middle of this one I simply stood there, awkwardly biting my lower lip and softly mumbling ‘bye, like I’d see him tomorrow, or this weekend, or next.

Forever goodbyes are so unlikely, so few and far between. Most of us don’t know how to be gone for good. We cling to our pasts, and re-visit old loves, and wonder what if.

A Weekend Getaway

It’s weird to feel at home when you’re not.

This weekend, a whirlwind trip brought me through Chicago and I ached for everything I gave up.

Waiting on the weather-worn platform to metro into the city, I was transported back to so many summers before. Stifling heat accosted me every time I stepped outdoors, while inside, icy blasts of AC immediately dried sweat in salty, sticky patterns on the back of my neck. This is not just Chicago but it is Chicago and her hellishly hot summer days...

There is a sweet wholesomeness to the Midwest. Everyone talks about the friendly faces and slower pace, but it’s more than that.

In the Midwest, there is a spirit of generosity, of saying “excuse me” when you jostle someone, of putting the damn iPhone away and making eye contact with strangers. This is the land of honey blonde highlights, curly hair with straightened, side-swept bangs, and wide faces pancaked with make-up hiding flaws that barely exist.

On Friday morning, I watched a pretty girl erase herself on the train. With a hand mirror and a battalion of brushes, she powdered and concealed and blushed and transformed herself into another. Somehow, her own insecurities made me feel better about myself. I thought smugly, I don’t need to do that. I’m ok as is.

Turns out a weekend in the Midwest was just the escape I needed.

The grass is always greener...

Do we always want what we can't have? Is it just a symptom of selfish twenty-somethings, or is everyone like this?

I have a great job and I'm thankful for the paycheck that's miraculously deposited into my bank account every other Friday, but when my unemployed friends flit from city to city sleeping on futons, visiting friends, and barhopping, it's hard not to feel jealous. I want the spontaneity of their lives. I want the flexibility. I want the freedom and the epic stories that come with crashing on a college friend's couch.

My unemployed friends tell me I'm crazy. "You think we want this? Roaming from place to place?" They tell me their parents harass them daily to find work, their savings are dwindling miserably, their rent feels scarily high. "The grass is always greener," they say as they hop on the bus to NY for the weekend...

But it's more than just the job thing. Not to pull a Carrie Bradshaw, but it's relationships too. As a young person, I spent months looking for a guy. The bar scene in DC is hectic and exhausting and I'm not the online dating type. But when you finally find someone who makes you happy, you second guess things. You're vulnerable again. A part of you longs for the independence and sense of self that comes from not catering to another person's needs.

A part of me feels like I should cut all ties. Remove the bindings that hold me to my current life (job, apartment, boyfriend) and see what I'm left with.

I feel antsy and in need of some serious self reflection. I want to visit Chile, San Francisco, Australia. I want to walk and run and canoe? Sitting at my desk day in and day out, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week,  351 days per year feels stifling.

I'm 23 and not getting any younger.  Now is my time.

But maybe, the grass is always greener?

A Little R & R...

I spent this past weekend in New York visiting friends and getting a much needed feel for the city. For some reason, after getting rejected by NYU over four years ago, I held a grudge against the city itself.

New York is dirty, I thought.
New York has too many weird hipsters, I thought.
New York is so imposing, I thought.

I returned to the city several times during my college career, but every visit was a "family visit" and usually included stressful cab rides, Broadway shows, and being shoved by Japanese tourists in Times Square.

So, what a refreshing change to escape Hyde Park and do New York up right!

I was a nomad for the weekend, wandering from 58th and Madison down to 31st and 7th every afternoon to visit my friend N at the Affinia hotel where she was bunking for two months. Every night consisted of bar hopping in the East Village or bumping into fellow Uchicago alums at the 24 hour nail salon near 27th and Lex (after inhaling an Indian feast so authentic my Indian friend's accent thickened from sheer bliss). But mostly. I walked. I walked and walked and ate and walked some more. We tried fabulous restaurants, sat in adorable cafes, and popped into cutesy vintage boutiques for some much needed wardrobe updating.

The best part of the weekend for me though, was the realization that even if I don't end up in Chicago, I'll be just fine. I've been clinging to what I know, rather than opening myself up to the idea that there are some pretty fabulous places where I could easily carve out a niche for myself. I know New York is the post-college dream, but I had always felt as if I wouldn't fit in. As my cousin L told me: It's really hard to not fit in, in NY.

Thank you N, C, L, S, and N for showing me your city and bringing a smile to my face. I'm lucky to have such amazing friends (and family!)

And...exciting news: while I was away, I received my very first job offer! I guess the saying's true. Things come along when you least expect it.