What No One Told Me About Reaching My Goals

When I write my resume, I am proud of the things I have accomplished. In fact, I have done almost all of the things I set out to achieve in college. What I have learned is that those moments often don’t feel quite like you think they will (I always feel like I should be getting taller when I achieve my goals, even though I have been the same height for almost seven years). There’s a reason they say opportunity looks like hard work. When I was sixteen, my dream was to become a National Merit Scholar, go out of state for college, join a sorority (and become a leader within that sorority), and work in a neuroscience research lab.

The National Merit thing and the subsequent scholarship that allows me to be at Alabama was pretty predictable. I actually did feel super excited about the possibility that all my hard work paid off– but most other people (besides my parents and gifted counselor) didn’t really care or get it. Underwhelming.

I was very interested in neuroscience in high school and was disappointed that Alabama didn’t have a formal program. I love that I continued to follow that passion and joined our small lab. I could not have dreamed that I would have a chance to present our work at a national conference. I also didn’t dream that our lab would be on the humid fourth floor of one of the University’s oldest buildings. The peaks are high, but in the day-to-day? Underwhelming.

Joining my sorority and being appointed to my various leadership positions are among the happiest moments of my life. I didn’t ever think part of that leadership would be dressing up like a frat dude for an audience of hundreds– just kidding; I loved that. Most of the time, I don’t feel like Megan Anderson, Executive Board Member. I feel like Megan Anderson, Wears a Gray Sweatsuit to Breakfast Every Day. Underwhelming.

In so many ways, I am the person I wanted myself to be in college. I dress better, I like my major, and I don’t feel weird about studying alone in a coffee shop– but I don’t think of myself differently, and I think many young people feel the same. If you climb a mountain and look down the entire time it will always look like rocks (I assume. I have never climbed a mountain). The challenge is to remember that the ascent doesn’t cheapen the summit.

I just got back from Colorado so I am full of mountain climbing metaphors. Be proud of your accomplishments and try not to let daily monotony discourage you. Your goals are worthy, even when they feel lame.

xo,

Megan

PS. I tried to rewrite this in a number of ways that didn’t sound like a humble brag, but none of them worked. Here it is, my humble brag.

PPS. I wish I looked as good as this stock photo when studying but I am usually wearing the aforementioned gray sweatsuit.

Changing Course

You may have been wondering, if you’re a particularly dedicated reader, in what location is the summer series I said I would write? Well, you creepily dedicated reader, it’s not up and it’s not coming. Here’s why.

I GOT A JOB!!!!

If you read Funemployed, you’ll know I was struggling to come to terms with the vast openness of my summer at home after a long and fruitless job search. As in the past, I have been touched by the “Anderson luck.” Both my brother and I are particularly lucky– not just to have been born to the easy lives we have but frequently in big, act-of-God ways. So, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me that one night while my family and I were dining at The Landing, we ran into Rachael– my brother’s girlfriend– and she told us that her uncle was looking for a receptionist at his law firm. Ding ding ding! Relatively short story shorter, here I sit from 8-5, Monday to Friday, raking in that sweet, sweet receptionist money. I like my office a lot. I  love working downtown, not only because I can eat lunch with my mom most days but also because I feel like I’m doing important work by bringing the average age of downtown Topeka employees down by at least five years. It is difficult work, rejuvenating the city, but someone has to do it.

My summer has gone from an expansive oasis to roughly eight weekends, which is part of the reason there will be no summer series. The other reason was that my ideas were not that good. I briefly became obsessed with organizing, I think partially to avoid my finals. It is very easy to organize a small room that you share. It is significantly more difficult to organize your childhood bedroom that has so much crap in it that the crap has formed geologic columns.

My other idea was for tiny found-object sculptures of the presidential candidates, which was foiled when most of them dropped out. One could also say that column would be “rude” or “not contributing in any significant way to American political discourse,” but I think I live my life in both of those ways, to an extent, already. Keeping with the title of this blog, I would have done it, but it is significantly less funny to kick people while they are down– which is why I won’t point out that in addition to not being the Republican nominee, Ted Cruz also looks like two pumps of my winter foundation.

I still have the tomatoes, by the way, and they are getting absolutely devoured by ants.

xoxo $$$,

Megan

If you want to read about the organizing kick I was on, go here.

If you want to read an interesting theory about the levels of argument (my sculptures would be level 1), go here.

P.S. The header image is the third image when you search “downtown topeka kansas” in Google under Creative Commons. The first picture is a highway overpass– literally just the overpass. The second picture is Kansas City.

 

Advice for Graduates

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! Today, I chose to honor this holiday by buying a pair of Steve Madden booties at the Nordstrom Rack. There was a girl in front of me in line who was clearly a recent high school graduate (she was shopping for platforms but had not yet developed the comfortably soft physique familiar to undergraduate women who are not employed as shot girls). I looked at her in all her hopefulness as we both argued lightly with our moms about who was paying, and I felt a pang of nostalgia. These are the moments I didn’t see coming when I was in her (new, discount) shoes.

I gained (and lost) 15 pounds and almost no one noticed. Stop stressing about the freshman fifteen because it happened to me and my hairdresser adamantly insisted I had not gained any weight. My feelings were lightly hurt when I once commented about how obese I looked in a photo at my heaviest and people said I look the same now. 

I passed Calc 3. And then I never shut up about it. I am actually having a small custom trophy made for this accomplishment currently.

I should stop buying things online from Charlotte Russe. This is the cause of much of the rayon in my closet and the reason I had a weird obsession with minimalism and organizing this spring.

I cried when I bought my first suit. In a weird alternate universe, it was because I was proud of the accomplished young woman I was becoming and the bright future ahead of me. Really, I just felt ugly. I would recommend curling your hair and wearing pantyhose to combat this phenomenon. Don’t say to yourself, “I will look like this for the rest of my life.”

Buying a Swiffer is a rite of passage. I have attended a few Quinceañeras and one bar mitzvah, but if you are a white middle American like me without the funds for a Sweet 16, the purchase and subsequent usage of a Swiffer sweeper signifies the passage into adulthood. Cherish the moment, it is fleeting.

Sometimes I catch myself being who I always wanted to be. And I’m like Hey! This doesn’t feel as cool as I thought it would. I thought I would be taller! And more aloof!

My majors– Finance and Economics– interest me and could foreseeably pay my bills one day. Yet, they are a total conversation killer. I am always tempted to tell people I am a Marine Biology major. Everyone loves dolphins; no one loves the Federal Open Market Committee.

I used to think I was a pretty big narcissist. But then I got to college and realized I wasn’t even the best at that! It is truly amazing what being in a large pool of talented people will teach you.

Congrats, graduates! Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will perish in zero gravity and your death will be on the Today show!

Xoxo,

Megan

 

Moving into Your “Third Place”

I realized this title sounds like the third place I’ve ever lived, which would be my freshman dorm, but there’s actually a pretty well-recognized concept known as the “third place.” The third place is basically a place you go very regularly that isn’t your home or workplace/school. For my strict definition of third place, it should be a place you visit multiple times a week.

Third places are important and the end of the third place for American adults is troubling because it signals a loss of connection (according to a lot of very serious articles). Third places in the past consisted of bridge clubs, lodges, church groups and similar locations. Some have suggested the internet as the modern-day third place, something I have some qualms about. Though I am on the internet every day (every second, some might say), it doesn’t foster the kind of close connections traditional third places do. It doesn’t build me. It does build my collection of cute dog pictures.

Starbucks even considers itself a third place, which is incidentally how I came to know about third places at all. The only person I actually know who makes Starbucks their third place is one of my economics teachers, who goes to Sbux every day and even intentionally decorated his apartment like a Starbucks.

Unless you’re my econ teacher, the chance of you moving into your third place is probably slim. My whole life, my third place was my dance studio, and though I loved it, I doubt they would let me move in. So when I had the unique opportunity to move into my college third place, I jumped at the opportunity– but not for that specific reason.

The ADPi house is my college third place, though I award Jimmy John’s and certain fraternities honorable mention. As a freshman, I came to the house every day to eat, study, and meet with my friends. During rush, I told PNMs (potential new members for those unsaturated with greek life) all about how I loved the house, spent so much time at the house, and even frequently napped on the couch we were sitting on. I usually followed it with this:

NAILED IT. But what I didn’t realize was how different living in the house would be. There were all the things I had hoped for: spontaneous trips to get takeout, random meetups in the second floor living room that turned into movie marathons, free laundry. To be honest, there were fewer pranks than I expected, which was disappointing. However, overall it has been about as cool as one could possibly hope for.

Unexpected dilemmas still arose. During rush I didn’t leave the house for two weeks. I had become unaccustomed to sunlight and was actually 70% through the naked mole rat transformation process. Who knew it was so simple? I have also totally removed commuting from my life, which is both a positive and a negative. People who actually have to commute like an hour for their jobs would probably give anything to give up their commutes, but there’s something psychological about physically going home that allows you to take off the day’s stress and be off duty. Walking upstairs doesn’t really have that same effect. On the other hand, I can roll out of bed, grab 8 strips of bacon (we always have bacon– don’t think sorority girls don’t eat) and be to class in 10 minutes.

Sharing a room is different, too. My roommate, Aly, was my roommate last year and we don’t have any of the major roommate problems I’ve heard of in my time at college– and there are some doozies. Aly’s worst roommate flaw is probably “watches too many movies,” so I’ve been pretty lucky. Still, for the last five years of my life, I was the only child living at home. I had basically unlimited alone time and space. I thought always being around others would annoy the daylights out of me, and for about two weeks, it did. Then, something amazing happened:

I became someone who loves to have other people around. It weirds me out when Aly goes on trips with her mock trials team and I have to fall asleep in our (totally normal sized, not overly large) room alone. Studying alone feels weird. I’m writing this in the basement study room/TV room and honestly feel a little weird about being alone. Living in the house really does connect you to your sisters.

I would absolutely recommend living in your sorority house. You’ll feel like you’re always on call– and if you have a leadership position, you are– and you’ll never be alone, but that’s half of the point. My sorority house is the safest, loudest, coziest (even though they keep the thermostat at 68 and I’m getting frosted out) and 2nd most meaningful place I’ve ever lived. First most meaningful is obviously my parents’ house but that’s a given for so many reasons. If you have the chance to live in a sorority house, do it. The only other chances to live with 64 other women are jail or a brothel and this blog post applies to neither of those places.

xoxo gobble gobble,

Megan

Last week: Word Vomit

Next week: Not really looking to commit to anything because it’s Thanksgiving but I have some extra days off school so maybe if the mood strikes me (why does this sound like a Tinder bio)

I Turned Twenty and All I Got Was This Quarter-Life Crisis!

I turned twenty this week. These are all the old person things I do now.

1. Collect candles. I am obsessed with candles and I can’t stop buying them. For me, a carefully curated candle collection indicates adulthood. The women of my family feel about Yankee Candle the way Canadians feel about maple syrup (polish pottery also endears itself in similar ways).  When my aunt Kris passed away, my mom opened her bathroom closet and found shelves upon shelves full of unburned Yankee Candles. I am not yet at this level.
2. Watch workout videos. I always remember my mom working out along with a video on PBS every morning before work. Now I watch pilates online and flop around on my carpet daily. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
3. Contemplate my own mortality. I always hated how characters in books going through a “midlife crisis” would seem so one-dimensional, like caricatures of aging. However, I experienced a pretty severe quarter-life crisis once I realized that in this decade I would become a full and bonafide adult. This is even the last year I can apply for youthful offender status if I commit a crime. People would ask me if I was excited to turn twenty and I would respond with such gems as, “Death is imminent,” “Our best days are behind us,” or the vivid and enticing, “We are all rotting from the inside out every day.” I am a joy to be around.
4. Talk on the phone for longer than an hour. When I was little,  Saturday mornings were my mom’s favorite time to call her mother and sister and talk for what seemed like eternity while I sweetly annoyed the daylights out of her. I  now talk to my mom for at least an hour twice a week.
5. Check my email and Facebook (two inarguably elderly-centered forms of communication) regularly. This has been going on for a while now but that doesn’t make it ok.
6. Use the restroom hourly. I used to be known as “the camel” for my prowess in never using the restroom on road trips. I am sad to see this stage of my life come to an end. More and more this post is turning into “How I Am Becoming My Mother in Six Easy Steps (With Bonus Existentialism!)”
7. Drink one glass of wine and pass out at 11 pm without ever leaving the house. Total mom move.

Hopefully next week I will do a review of the StitchFix I got for my birthday, pending my roommate taking a series of photos of me wearing different outfits, an activity I know she lives for. If not, I will draw the outfits on MS Paint and do it anyway.

With love and with one toe in the grave,

Megan

Pull It Together

As I’ve written before, I am careening into adulthood like a car that wants to make a left turn and has totally misjudged the speed and distance of other vehicles.

I was particularly struck by my own impending adulthood today in several separate instances. I went on DegreeWorks, our system for planning your progress towards your degree, and realized that not only am I categorized as a Junior but also that it was going to be somewhat difficult to stretch my remaining class requirements over more than three semesters. I grabbed my laptop and made a long and loud inhaling sound, like the kind my mom makes when I make a risky driving maneuver (driving metaphors are all over this post today). Accordingly, I finalized my plans to double major and added a specialization, because there is no way I am ready for the adult world and I’m sure as hell not going a year early.

One of my friends, Emily Ferons, really has her life together (most of the time). Today, I was sitting on her bed, invading her personal space and generally making a nuisance of myself, as usual, when she told me she was applying for summer internships. I replied, “Emily!!!!!!!!! We! Just! Got! Back! To! School!!!!!!!” She looked up at me (not over her glasses but it would’ve been if she was wearing glasses. Same vibe) and then resumed her applying. It was terrifying. To combat the impending sense of doom I felt creeping in, I made a resume. Are any of my experiences particularly relevant to the jobs I will be pursing? No. Is it in the correct format? Yes. You win some, you lose some.

At heart, I’m just one of those guys who changes their major 5 times so they can stay in school for 8 years and graduate with a General Studies degree. Those are my people. I just accidentally get really motivated sometimes, like when I took all those AP classes in high school, which seemed like it was going to be really awesome– and it mostly was. I got to skip all the really boring and somewhat shoddy gen-eds, which was cool, but now I’m trying to find ways to prolong the good ole days before I let corporate America relentlessly juice me like a prune. This accidental motivation happens to me a lot, and I think it’s because I don’t tell myself no enough. I’m like an out of control child that no one is putting on a backpack/ leash. “I’m probably qualified to do everythiiiiinnnnnggg” would be the chorus to my personal anthem and the other lyrics would be, “Lawyer, realtor, professor, writer, politician, psychologist– I have no direction.” Notice I did not list songwriter. The only other people who are allowed to list that many things they want to do are six, and also probably just ate 30 Jolly Ranchers.

Right now I live in super adulthood purgatory, where everything I buy is pink and I haven’t prepared a meal for myself in six weeks and we have security guards downstairs at night. I don’t know how our ancestors did it. At my age, they hunted and gathered and farmed and whatever and I made a trip to Jimmy John’s the other day, which is a block over (I took my car), and felt personally stressed and relieved when it was over. These are not the emotions of someone who could possibly graduate next year. And yet, I’m not even the most infantile person I know. Which is concerning. We should be SO concerned about that. I should be in the like second percentile of adulthood traits for my age. That would be comforting, not for me personally, but for humanity and the future of society. This is me, the perennial benchwarmer of the team in the race to adulthood, heckling my teammates loudly from the bench: pull it together.

I promise to never leave you hanging for a month again xoxo,

Megan

dd

I’m Really Judgmental But I Would Still Hang Out With Me

I’m back in the southland today, which lends its name to the “southern belle” part of “part time southern belle.” It’s lovely to be back in the land of magnolias and creative town names– see Hoxie, Tallapoosa, and Humansville– but there’s one thing that catches my eye more than any other when I’m in Dixieland: the men’s knees. All my life, men’s knees were shrouded in mystery– or rather, fabric. Shorts that don’t graze the calf are too short for men in the midwest, where they don a look colloquially known as “aggressively straight.” But not in Alabama. Men of all shapes and sizes rock the five- inch pastel inseam, a level of immodesty in the midwest akin to a woman wearing a bikini to a sit-down restaurant. However, unlike a woman in a bikini consuming a steak, these men don’t seem to ask themselves, Am I too hefty to be wearing this?

. . .

About a week ago, someone I had recently become friends with offhandedly mentioned that a mutual acquaintance had told him she wasn’t too fond of me. She reasoned that I was a priss and a snob. At first I was upset– it’s never nice to find out that someone doesn’t like you– but then I thought it over: I already knew this. I know I’m a priss and a snob; I have known this since kindergarten. I know this because I am one of the most critical people I know. I am self-critical, mostly. However, when you’re constantly making judgements, big truths arise. I will always have to stop myself from being a little princess and I work on it– sometimes harder than other times. To have judged myself and known myself is to make myself stronger.

Yeah, that’s me, being a young snob as a Daisy at Scott Magnet school. I like to look nice. I like nice things. I once owned a Juicy Couture jumpsuit. I wear glitter eyeshadow to work. That’s the vibe I give off. It’s not my only trait, but it is true.

. . .

I think many of us have grown to believe the fallacy that to love ourselves we must believe we are perfect as we are. Which is crazy. We don’t believe our friends or families are perfect and we love them still; to say it should be different with ourselves is to be overly defensive. I could enumerate an extensive list of my own flaws, but you were to ask me if I like myself, the answer would always be yes. I want to get better in every aspect, but like the southern men in their short shorts, I believe that I am good enough, cool enough, deserving enough to do what I please. To love yourself is not to give up on any self-improvement: it is very much the opposite. To love yourself is to recognize yourself as human and fallible, and to aspire to be the best silly, flawed human you can be, with the awareness that our time on Earth is both long enough to change and fleeting enough to be forgotten. We will never accept ourselves as totally perfect; we aren’t. It’s cool. It’s fine. We can work on it a little.

Take a Buzzfeed quiz today. Find out what Starbucks drink you are and then accept it and move towards self love because whatever it told you, you probably already knew. I’m a snob and a typical white girl, but I’m also fiercely loyal. I’m ok with that.

Love,

A Pumpkin Spice Latte

I’m a Big Kid Now

You know when you’re at an intersection, and you want to turn left, but another car is approaching? And you maybe misjudge the speed of the other car a little bit, so you decide to go for it, but midway through your turn you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake? When this happens to me, I like to accelerate very slightly– not enough to make a difference– open my eyes very widely, and scream for the entire duration of the turn.

This is similar to the way in which I am approaching adulthood.

I bought a suit this summer and felt very serious and very business-y. I’m in the business school so I pretty much spend all of my time reminding people how serious I am and how much easier my coursework is than that of the engineering students. It’s very strenuous. Still, I have butt-length blonde hair and my resume has a headshot. It also has my name in bold lilac letters and lists me as the recipient of the “America Needs Cheerleaders” award. Secret: it’s the resume I created for sorority rush. Yikes.

Simultaneously, I am learning to cook. I don’t have any good or original jokes for this topic but it kind of goes with the “becoming an adult theme” so I thought I would through it out there. Eh.

—

I always thought from childhood that I would grow up to be a writer. I love to write, and as good as I am, I’m much, much faster. I am the Usain Bolt of paragraphs, if Usain Bolt sometimes decided that he hated the race he had been running and turned around. Also if Usain Bolt wouldn’t let anyone watch him run. I’m a very neurotic sprinter is what I’m trying to say. I almost never edit anything, but I often throw things away or let them languish in my drafts until I find them very, very embarrassing. If you’re reading something I wrote, I wrote it in a near manic state of productivity and then pushed publish. This is basically stream-of-consciousness, which is why I sometimes sound like a politician or a serial killer eulogizing someone before they die.

This all adds up to not being particularly employable as a writer. For a while, I thought about becoming a columnist, but imagine if my boss was trying to criticize me. Megan, people can’t relate to your column. Your jokes are very weird. You need to adopt a self-reflective style. You need to let me read your stuff before you just let it go to print, he says. I imagine myself as the writer of the one actual column with words in Cosmo in this scenario. But this is who I ammmmm, I whine, I’m not changing it because they don’t get it. I’ll lose and stay myself. I’ll starve and stay myself. And that’s how I become homeless. I probably also throw myself on the ground dramatically and get stepped on by several leopard/ hot pink stilettos.

—

I have always prided myself upon being a very chill girl; I rarely care about anything. However, the things I care about, I am totally insane about. I am crazy like a fox. I swing from confident and productive to a  depressive bleeding heart. It’s totally unpredictable. When I am uninspired, my work gets very patriotic– it’s apparently a subconscious fallback. If I could, I would write full time, developing the kind of toxic relationship with my own thoughts that couples who work from home sometimes adopt. I care deeply– obsessively– about the integrity of my work, which is why I write 90% awkward jokes, 10% complaints. That’s a body of work with integrity, I think, apparently. There is so little originality left to be said, in some ways I think I am grasping, desperately, violently, to say something shocking or novel before it is all used up. It is an insecurity of sorts that manifests rarely but viciously in my life. I’m working on controlling it. We all have something little and dark within us (oh God that’s cliche) through and to we push ourselves. Adulthood is how you bump into your own ugliness and also the amount of anxiety you get when you have to talk on the phone.

In haste, but with intention this time,

Megan

What I Did This Summer (Megan Anderson, 14th Grade)

This would have a really cool cover photo but I still haven’t uploaded any of my photos to my computer because I am a huge mess!!

So in May I went to Italy, and when people have asked me how my trip went, I’ve responded pretty generically, as if they were asking me how I liked a dessert they had personally prepared. “Cool. Awesome. Great,” I’ve replied in monotony. And it was all of those things, but it was also confusing and broadening and sometimes sad. I loved Rome and the sea. I missed America and fried eggs and clean cut, pastel clothed boys. Do you see how this is going?

Here’s a little more: Italy ruined coffee and pepperoni and Olive Garden for me, but as I type this I’m drinking coffee from the Keurig with CoffeeMate creamer in it, so I guess if I’m anything, I’m consistent. I cried when I stepped off the plane in DC and saw a Starbucks. But I can drink espresso straight now, so I have broadened my horizons as every study abroad brochure advertises. Speaking of studying, I barely studied at all. We’ll leave it at that.

I thought a lot about ownership while I was in Italy. Some days we had nothing planned, and I didn’t want to spend 20 euros for a train ticket, so I would sit in the park near our hotel and just think. I was peeved at iTunes for putting all of my music in the Cloud, because now I couldn’t listen to it without WiFi and I didn’t have a data plan abroad. It seemed strange to me that songs I had “owned” two years ago were now inaccessible to me, like an ex-boyfriend or a pair of size zero jeans from middle school. I thought about 99-year leases on land in Hawaii and all sorts of other ways we fool ourselves into believing that our possessions are constant. I developed a sort of espresso fueled angst, which is to say I assimilated with the Italian youth culture. There are a lot of candid pictures of me looking pissed off from this trip, but I had a good time, I swear.

While I sat in the park, people often tried to talk to me and guess my nationality. I had a solid background in 100 level Italian, so I felt pretty prepared to engage them, as long as they followed a predetermined script and enunciated as though I was deaf. Often, I could physically feel my synapses firing slowly, as though I were a career meth addict trying to take the ACT. The answers were there, somewhere, but I was slow. I was mistaken for French several times, which I attribute to pure confusion because I am both blonde and curly-haired and not particularly thin nor sophisticated. Italians know about California. I explained Kansas a lot.

I never got pickpocket-ed but I’m not sure if the wallet I bought is real leather, which is fine with me because I like it regardless. I grew strong knees (we stood and walked all the time) and a weak alcohol tolerance (I had to lay off the midday wine). I liked dressing simply but hated the clothes I had brought with me by the end of the month. I felt uncomfortable not knowing all the cultural norms. The front desk man at my hotel listened to American country music and I sang along under my breath. I texted my boyfriend, but we lived in a perpetual state of night; it was always 3 a.m. for one of us. I swam in the sea and let my hair get sun bleached. Our hotel in Rome brought us breakfast in bed (coffee and pastries) and it made their microscopic shower worth it. I drank wine and ate pasta and road on a gondola in Venice (the lights on the water at night are magical). The cities never felt romantic, but they were often beautiful or sleepy or exciting.  This paragraph, much like my trip, is a grab bag of ideas. No apologies. Some confusion.

The Death of “Basic”

I like the sound of babies crying. Before I get put on some sort of serial killer watch list, let me explain. When tiny newborn babies cry, they are trying with all of their might to make sound– to draw attention to themselves, to stir the sea with a teaspoon. And the result isn’t all that impressive: they hardly make a sound at all. That vulnerability and ambition is rare and honest. It’s our first attempt at individuality and significance, and for that reason, I think the sound of babies crying is endearing. 

In some ways, it’s the way we all live our lives. Increasingly available niche fame dominates the Internet– she’s the Angelina Jolie of highly-filtered coffeehouse Instagram, he’s the Floyd Mayweather of French amateur BMX. As we try to define ourselves– a process once lovingly referred to as coming-of-age– we increasingly focus on branding and re-branding ourselves. But adolescence is not a company in need of advertising and people are not flat. Personalities do not accomodate to the lowest common denominator.

This search for an identifiable and powerful personal brand renders reality clichè: everything has been done before and nothing is memorable, therefore nothing is worthwhile. As we, the generation of special snowflakes, age, we conceal under professional guise the naturally awkward process of self-discovery and so dies the notion of nuance. We see each other in black and white and empathy for the juvenile experiences and struggles of others is lost. Our stories have been told and told and so it is hard to see others as anything more than children playacting at a narrative not of their own wit. 

This is not a new conundrum. When Shakespeare invented thousands of words and several genres, he told in brief or in sketch the general stories of most of our lives. Somewhere out in the world is a story of a child preternaturally obsessed with death who grew tall like a willow tree too early and ran off to see the world, with mixed results. This is the long and the far too short of my story, but it doesn’t rob my of my individuality or my experiences of their validity. I think in one of the Traveling Pants novels— lowbrow entertainment to be sure–  one of the girls goes to Italy (maybe Greece). It’s not a new story; I’m going anyway. We strip ourselves of joy and discovery when we flatten experiences to fit a narrow stereotype and thus devalue them. 

When we call ourselves or others “basic”, “hipster” or any number of other neo-stereotypes, we passively agree to the depreciation of the individual. The multitude of diversity is why we live; without it, we advance in the path of least resistance meaninglessly as nothing more than nameless consumers. Live your life unabashadly and let the story write (and read) itself.