Being 23 is hard

Commence scoffs from everyone over the age of 35. And you know what, when I'm 35, I will scoff too. In 10-15 years when I read this blog post (not unlike when I found the diary I wrote at 14 and laughed until I cried) I will think "Shannon, you were an idiot and you needed to chill out," but this is young me telling old me to SHUT IT.

Because when I do look back, I will remember life events, and I will undoubtedly have experienced more hardship than I have thus far, but I will also have forgotten how hard life feels when you're 23. The problem with looking back is you forget that at 23, or at 14, you had no other frame of reference to compare life to besides the past...a past that feels far easier than the present. I spend so much time trying to be strong and toughing it out, but man, being in your 20's is emotionally exhausting.

I cannot recall ever feeling so utterly lost. It's different than being in a haze of grief. You know there's no road map to it, but the one reprieve you're given by the world is the fact that you are, in fact, grieving. But feeling lost when things are basically fine? In our society, that's inexcusable. You have to man up, get over it, and be a human being.

For the past, I dunno, 4 months, I've spent a lot of time learning about generations and reading about mine in particular. Most of what I've read has been relatively supportive of the mess us 20 somethings are sorting through. College loans exceeding income, why sex is the new standard of romance, technology teaching us instant but fleeting satisfaction, etc. All of these articles explain what we're living through, and they explain that it's not really our fault. Some of the articles are essays a lot like this, that speak from my point of view and for the most part, get my life pretty spot on. A few are critical, but as I am from the generation of exorbitant self-confidence, I don't pay those much mind. ;)

But they don't really help. Sure, it's nice to know that whatever affliction I seem to have, I'm not the only one cursed by it. That my quest for lasting happiness is not a new-found idea, and that I'm not on an untraveled path in my pursuit of it. I'm not alone in feeling mediocre. But that doesn't change the fact that I had expectations for my life, and by not meeting them, I feel like a failure. SO. MUCH.

When you're young your life is laid out simply for you. You go to school, you go to college, you work, you get married, you have kids, you work more, you have grandkids, you retire, and then...well, we all know how it ends.

But what you fail to realize is that these things don't always happen in the order you expect them to, the order that you were told they were...and that there is a heck of a lot more time in between the things at the back end of that list than at the front. Which leaves you with a lot of TIME. But no one really tells you how you're supposed to fill that time.

I'm 23, which means that I am broke. Always. I get ahead and suddenly I have to get new brakes on my car and bam. Broke again. So it's not like I have a lot of resources to occupy my time. So mostly I feel like I'm just waiting. Waiting for the next life milestone. And I'm not the type of person usually content to wait. I am a product of my generation...I'm used to instant happiness. So the fact that I'm still just waiting for happiness to "happen" to me is beyond frustrating.

There have been times that I have decided I will create my own happiness, rather than just waiting for it to happen to me. That's a gamble usually; sometimes it works, and other times it crashes and burns. Sometimes I wonder if I actually gain much by running from the waiting or if it's really just way of filling the time. Sometimes I find activities to distract myself. But the uncertainty that is life as a 23 year old is not something you can escape forever, and at the end of the day, that uncertainty is all you can think about.

They say you need to live for the journey and not for the destination. But what if you don't even KNOW your destination? How are you even supposed to attempt a journey when you don't know where you want to go?

So we wander aimlessly. Because we're expected to do SOMETHING in the meantime. And whether or not we admit it, that's what we're all doing. Even once we reach those milestones; when we get that job, or when we meet that Mr. Right, we continue to trudge along until we figure out our purpose. College was hard, but at least there was a goal and an end in sight. This is unmarked territory. This is the point where most of us are left to decide completely on our own what it is that's going to make us happy...and I think for most of us...we have no idea. No EARTHLY idea. So we either wait until we do, or we keep leaping until we finally land on happiness island.

I wish the end of this blog was Shannon's magical answer. Her well-crafted, thoughtful, poignant conclusion. How we can all combat the 20-something blues. But if I had the answer, I don't think this post would even exist. I am just as confused and lonely as the rest of my generation. For a Class A certified, self-proclaimed know-it-all, I don't have the answers. And that scares me. I won't accept the attempts at answers from my peers, and I won't accept the seemingly unrelatable answers from my elders. So what am I left with?

Not much. But I am left with my brain, my heart, and my future. One day, maybe as my 35 year old self looks back and reads this for fun, I'll eventually realize that a brain, a heart and a future? That's more than enough.

Speaking of reminiscing

This weekend I am foolishly flying to the coldest place on earth, aka the tundra, aka Ann Arbor, MI, for Sarah Davis's graduate voice recital. It will be fantastic and freezing. I'm dubbing this weekend "Reunion of Glory" because it will be the first time that Sarah, Ash, and Tjaden and I will all be together in over a year. And it will be the first time we've been together for more than just dinner since the week after we graduated (TINO). Needless to say, I cannot wait.

In preparation for this weekend, I decided to look back at the Haikus we wrote as baby freshmen in Diction class. The only way to get through the torture that was Diction was to entertain ourselves via alternative means. Sometimes this involved Disney Princess coloring books, drawing pictures of Dr. Rierson/other classmates (witness for yourself here, here, and here), and eventually, writing haikus. We passed a sheet around class after class, compiling said haikus. Tjaden even kept the sheet in a locket (geez we were so lame). Eventually when the year was over and we were finished with diction forever, I typed the sheet up and put it in a note on Facebook (remember those?). So today I spent a good half hour trying to figure out how to even FIND FB notes (timeline is confusing sometimes), and not only did I rediscover the glorious haikus (sorry, if we're not FB friends you're not going to be able to read that...but I forgot how much they referenced Creepy Makeout Boy!!!), but this GEM of a note...

Back story: Ethnomusicology was the last section of Music History we had to take, which we took in the Spring of 2009, or second semester Junior Year. Pedre Aponte, the teacher of said class, is a wonderful, wonderful man, but not the greatest of lecturers. On the first day of class with him as our teacher, I distinctly remember Lauren Catron turning to look at me about five minutes into the lecture, with nothing but panic and confusion in her eyes as she asked, "Do you have ANY idea what he's even saying?!"

After that, it became common practice to show up (or not) and pay zero attention. You would just write down the stuff he put in the power point and pray that you somehow passed the class. One day, to entertain myself, I pulled out my digital camera. I turned off the sound, and browsed through the pictures I had recently taken. Once I got bored of that, I decided to take some new ones. I turned off the flash so no one would know I was being SO CREEPY and decided to take pictures. Pictures of the wall, of the front of the classroom, of my friends while they weren't paying attention, etc. It did not dawn on me that even when you turned the flash off on this camera that an orange light on the front would still go off anytime a picture was taken. It was pointed out to me once I took a picture of Pedro, as he happened to be staring DIRECTLY AT ME. This is how the conversation in front of the seventy person class went:

Pedro (in a heavy South American accent): So the charango....hey....did you just take a picture of me?!
Me: I....uh....what....huh? NO. I DIDN'T.
Pedro: Hahahaha that's very funny! So anyway, the charango...

My friends were beside themselves they were laughing so hard, but I was TOTALLY MORTIFIED. Here's the horrible, horrible proof.

Anyway, the point of this long and embarrassing backstory is because today I found this note that I wrote that day. After the picture "incident", Sarah Davis wrote a short story and I put it online. However, since the disco did not exist yet, I don't have it in a blog, so I'm fixing that today. It's basically amazing (note the Teen Girl Squad references...win!). I'd put the haikus in a blog too, except I'm pretty sure we're the only four people who find them funny. Anyway, without further ado, I give you:

The Story of Ethnomusicological Love

Written this morning by Sarah Davis in Ethnomusicology. Inspired by an EMBARRASSING event.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Shannon who had a secret desire to marry Pedro Aponte. Every day she woke up extra early to get good-lookin' so Pedro would think she looked sooooooooooooooo good! However, day after day, it seemed that her efforts were going to waste. Pedro was consistently paid more attention to some annoying girl named (sorry but I don't feel right putting this on fbook ...hilarious, but I don't even remember this girl's name, otherwise I would have just changed it to the original words. But she was definitely annoying). What a bitch!

One day, Shannon had a brilliant idea. She knew how she would win Pedro's latin-loving heart. She would learn SPANISH!! Day after day, night after sleepless night, Shan studied and prayed that her efforts would work.

Finally the day arrived. Shannon looked extra so-good that day just in case the Spanish didn't work. During the lecture Shannon got a little excited, however, and was caught sneakily taking a photo of Pedro (weirdo). Pedro asked to see Shannon in his office later. Shannon was filled with conflicting emotions...she was going to Pedro's office where she could speak Spanish to her heart's content!!!!!! But she was going to be questioned.

Shannon knew she just had to go in the office and be a baller. No time like the present. Shannon took a breath, opened the door...


....AND WAS EATEN BY A LION!


And that was the end. Well crafted, in my opinion.

This story also inspired a blog post I wrote two months later, in honor of my DHall crush and Joe Scott's birthday.



...this weekend is going to be awesome.


Man, I used a lot of links in this post.