Ponder

The following is the first official post of PoCo, a series of essays on life [po]st [co]llege.

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One year after graduating from college, I exist in a very strange place.

I am a young, employed American when it’s not as easy as it once was to have a decent job. I know I am, and sometimes I do feel, lucky. But I also inhabit another world in which I struggle to feel comfortable in this new life of desks, hours of sitting stationary, long meetings, and bumper-to-bumper commutes.

Monday through Friday I wake up in the morning and drive to an office on the other side of town. As my car transports me to where I’m supposed to be, I think about the gloom of another day filled with the same tasks. I know that I will not experience anything different or extraordinary and I most likely will not be challenged or feel deeply passionate about my assignments. Sometimes when these thoughts arise, I put in Bob Dylan’s album Desire, turn it up loud enough to drown out the pavement, and let his voice and stories swallow my reality.

I arrive at the office, go inside, make a cup of tea, and sit down at my desk, where I will be for eight more hours. I work with some great people and the job usually isn’t unbearable. Other times it can be. After sitting for so long and staring into the single consuming eye of a computer, my mind is often tired and numb, as if static waves are radiating from my brain and out through my skull. As this old record spins over and over for the standard 40 hours each week, I become one among the masses. Still, when I look out the window about two feet away from my desk, I see the whole universe and feel so small.

A full year has passed since I received my diploma, but it doesn’t feel that way. My days blur into weeks and my weeks turn into pay periods, and the pay periods then become a ceaseless non-measurement of life. Time consists of a continuous routine of going to sleep, almost always before midnight, waking at 7:30, and coming home around 6:30 in the evening. After I walk through the front door and eat some dinner, I start searching for the energy and focus to work on projects that I am truly interested in. And though the dreams for my ambitions have never left me, I only sometimes manage to execute them.

During a recent weekend at my family’s ranch, I talked about these emotions with my parents, whose lives have always been consumed by their jobs. As we sat around on the front porch in the heat of the dry Texas summer drinking beer and iced tea, I expressed to Mom and Dad that my current situation is not what I want in life. They might understand, but they also tell me things like: “Very few people are able to make money doing what they love,” and “40 hours a week is not that much.” I think they think this is a phase that I’ll grow out of it. I’m not so sure I want to.

One day while running after work, I finally understood why this new life feels so unnatural, why these new shoes don’t fit. After finishing the dirt track around the lake, I walked over to a nearby pond to stretch. When the muscles in my legs began to loosen, I sat back up and laced my arms around my dusty knees. Staring into the distance, I noticed a group of young girls playing in the shallow water. Their laughter was audible and continued growing louder as they had more and more fun. I watched them for some time, taking note of how human they seemed—laughing, exploring, interacting. At a certain point, I realized that it wasn’t them I was watching. It was myself.

I too used to be so innately human. And now I feel as if I am crossing over from youth to a modern adulthood preaching a creed with which I disagree. What is the point of working one’s life away when it doesn’t create happiness? When two of my loved-ones died last fall, I decided that I want to live as if I truly grasp the significance of the realization that life is  much too short to live for the sake of making money.

While I think these thoughts, I feel empowered by an intangible freedom that might be waiting for me in the future. I often find myself imagining the job that is so right for me that it doesn’t feel like work, but instead gives me the opportunity to simply be who I am and do what I love. But ultimately, I cannot outrun the looming dark cloud over my head: I am employed when 9.4 percent of Americans are not. I feel guilty for feeling more stuck than lucky.

Lately I’ve been focusing more on the good and somehow managing to work a little more on the projects I care about. And, though it was painful, I just made it through the first summer of my entire life spent working full time. Sometimes I think I’m starting to know how to live, but I remain to be uncomfortable most of the time. While I keep trying to find my place, I guess I’ll let the pavement carry me to work again tomorrow.