Follow your dreams!*
01 Jul 2011 1 Comment
*As long as they come with health insurance!
As children, we’re bombarded with stories, movies, and motivational posters about following one’s dreams. I was utterly convinced for many years everyone on earth was toiling away in their dream occupation. (Perhaps the lunch ladies simply enjoyed the support of hairnets and the smell of canned lima beans…who was I to judge?)
Growing up I’d always done three things: accents, write stories, and draw. So, my inclination was to follow my dreams like I’d been taught and go to art school!
Nope. That’s not practical, apparently. How is a degree in Art going to get me a job? How am I going to support myself? Does that degree guarantee a job with benefits? *Was there an asterisk on those “Follow Your Dreams!” posters I’d simply never noticed?
So, I went to Georgia Tech. I earned a bachelors of science in International Affairs and African Politics because, like any good burgeoning-adult I craved the legitimacy of a “real degree for a real job.”
Soon after graduating I was offered a great position in Washington, D.C. with all the trappings of adulthood career-legitimacy: office, 9-5 hours, salary, benefits, horrible team building retreats…but upon getting the offer, my stomach dropped. I knew I had to turn it down.
My sister took me out for drinks and asked what I had to lose by moving to LA and giving a writing career the ol’ college try. I had everything to lose: my dream, a hobby I loved, the respect of my friends, I might fail…
Listening to myself come up with every cowardly excuse not to try it showed me all my major fears about following my dream revolved around how it would look to other people. I would look juvenile or aimless or irresponsible. And I defined myself (secretly) in terms of being a writer, so if I failed, did that mean I failed at life?
I knew deep down in my gut I had to go. So, I drove across the country with one of my best friends to Los Angeles in a car packed with my life up to that point. As Kerouac once said, I was at “the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.” Hopefully, anyway. I have no job or financial security and there’s a distinct possibility I will never sell a script. But!
Here’s what I realized: for the rest of my life, I will never have to wonder. I will have the success of knowing I followed my heart.
I did a very adult thing by following my bliss. Adulthood is about identifying what makes you happy and making that your reality. Health benefits included or not.
(Though you should still find a way to get health insurance—let’s not be irresponsible here.)
Polite Purgatory
30 Jun 2011 2 Comments
No one told me how strange my twenties were going to be. It seems like each bracket of ages gets a warning label of some sort: terrible twos, puberty, hell even senior citizens get to needle point pillows with pithy sayings like “Old Age is Hell”.
But as far as my Google searches relay (which is, of course, the only way my generation gets our information) the twenties has no fun “here’s what to expect!” title.
Well, I’ll tell you how I see it: It’s a bit like purgatory—not in the punishment-ridden, deamony, hellish way, though. In the polite way.
It’s like being in the hallway between adolescence and adulthood; you’re not really in one or the other yet and things get hazy in this corridor: manners, specifically.
Being reared in the South, manners were paramount. “Ma’am” and “sir” follow “yes” and “no” as surely as vomiting follows watching a “Twilight” movie. They were a way to show respect to your elders.
Manners are a big part of the successes I’ve had in the professional world; manners show respect and makes people feel at ease. I’ve depended upon them to get me through a wide variety of social situations. I’m a big fan of manners. But what happens when I suddenly move into the “elders” category?
I’m starting to reach that age when I shouldn’t automatically call a new professional contact mister or miss [last name] or even ma’am. It’s weird to call someone my age “Mr. Smith” or ma’am a peer.
My relationship to manners has to shift or I run the risk of actually offending someone with etiquette! Ahh, delicious irony.
Now, this doesn’t mean that manners go out the window and I can stark barking orders at people. Instead, I need to use them while viewing myself on equal-adult-footing as the people I am interacting with. Easier said than done, of course.
Networking / Blind dating: Tomato / Tomahto
29 Jun 2011 2 Comments
A little under two years ago, I moved to Los Angeles with the completely original idea of being a screenwriter. Not knowing a soul out here coupled with the fact that success in the film industry is 98% based on whom you know, I needed to network.
Sure, I’d heard the word “Networking” followed by a casual statement about how your future career, success, happiness, and life depend totally upon it but never was it followed with a helpful “And here’s exactly how to do it.”
But back to LA: So there I was, doggy paddling in the adult pool of networking, armed with nothing but the water-wings of an amped-up Southern accent and “Oh-god-I-hope-I’m-doing-this-right” smile.
A few hundred (hyperbole!) blind coffee meetings later and I was the Michael Phelps of “ was kind enough to impose upon you on my behalf and I’d be so grateful if you’d let me buy you a cup of coffee sometime to pick your brain about X…”
And here’s what I have learned about networking: it’s exactly like blind dating.
I say this having never been on a blind date but I imagine (remember, writer? I can totally do that) they’re very similar; nerve-wracking, can lead to good things, and fraught with awkward-pause-possibilities.
In either situation, it’s important to remember:
1) Make a good first impression:
Be polite and excited when you make first contact. Manners and respect for his/her time is key. Don’t be afraid to use humor—assuming you have a sense of humor.
2) Look your best.
Dress appropriately for the venue and time of day. (It’s safe to say there is no time or place in which velour track suit or Uggs are acceptable.)
3) Whoever does the inviting, does the paying.
If the successful person you’ve invited to coffee offers to pay, pitying the fact that you make so little money the government with a trillion-dollar deficit gives you all your taxes back (thank you, Uncle Sam), let them pay. But be sure to offer first.
4) Be engaged.
Actively listen. Ask intelligent questions. Be respectful of what you don’t yet know about the industry. People love feeling like they have valuable wisdom to impart (case and point: me) so pay attention. Forget you even have a cell phone during your meeting.
5) Follow up.
Sent a thank you note (or e-mail) and check-in periodically with a friendly hello-how-are-you, especially when you don’t need anything from them.
Also, send a quick note to the person who connected you with them. People love hearing about the connections they’ve made.
6) MEET EVERY CONTACT! (the golden rule)
If someone offers to set you up with his uncle’s second wife’s best friend’s colorist’s boyfriend because he once worked as an intern at the world’s largest clothes hanger factory and you’re dreaming of the day you are head-clothes-hanger-engineer, you do it.
Even if all he offers you is 30-minutes of advice you’ve heard a million times before—you’ve added a rung in the ladder to where you’re headed! (Assuming you didn’t wear a velour track suit and check your phone the whole time).
The point of networking is not immediate gratification: okay, you might luck out and get a job or what-have-you right after a meeting, but the true importance of networking comes from the advice and relationships you establish.
So! Relax; be that friendly, open, polite person I know you are and enjoy the experience of meeting a new human being.
When I’m a Grown-Up…
28 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
“Credentials and ID, please, Elizabeth.” She said with a pleasant but automatic tone; clearly she makes this request quite often. “I’m sorry, Ms. Dahl, now.”
I handed over my ID and paperwork: transcripts, resume, recommendations, and anecdotes to the smiling woman behind the counter. She stamped them all over with official seals.
In the Orientation Hall a woman handed me a key to a closet full of tailored clothes and dresses and a man cut my hair into a nice shoulder-length bob. A few classes on mortgages, investing, and real estate later and I was sent off with my bag of goodies and my officially stamped paperwork.
I marched to a set of doors, directly opposite from the ones I’d entered, leading me out of to the other side of the building. “Welcome to Adulthood,” the sign said.
So, it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I honestly thought becoming an adult was like getting your driver’s license: you had to be certain age, you studied for it, and you literally felt different afterwards.
Instead, adulthood is this strange word that has immeasurable effects on our lives but no tangible moment of achieving it.
As a child, I would look at people I knew to be adults, and they were so confident and put together. It was clear to me there was a magic age when you walked through a mist of some sort (Maybe a curtain; the gateway was still vague at the time) and you were instantaneously converted into an adult.
Once through this mist (curtain, gate, etc), freedom, confidence, and responsibility coursed through your veins, smoothing out your appearance and allowing you to laugh with good-natured, albeit condescending giggles at Life and her many obstacles that seemed insurmountable as a child.
Well, I’m almost 26 and have walked through every damn mist, curtain, and gate I have come across but none have magically transformed me. Sure, my appearance has changed, t-shirts giving way to more tailored clothes and my accessories now come from proper shops instead of cereal boxes (mostly). But where’s the carefree, condescending life-giggling that’s supposed to come with the look?
I truly began wondering about adulthood when my father passed away in January at 61, leaving me as executor of his estate and guardian of my 95-year-old grandmother. This experience has come with all the trappings of true adulthood: helping a loved one die with peace and dignity, mortgage, selling a house, taxes, being responsible for another human being, planning a funeral, eulogizing a parent, forgiving a parent…but it came with none of the confidence I’d expected to feel as a true grown-up.
My great-aunt at the age of 87 once said, “This is too much for a 14-year-old to bear,” meaning herself in that moment. Amen, sister.
Maybe adulthood is just this ephemeral place where we are wholly confident and in-charge, ringing with happy-condescending-life-giggling. And maybe being a grown-up is about those moments we make it into that misty-adult place, allowing us the grace to do what seems impossible outside of it.
Inevitably, we will fall out of it every now and then, getting scared and overwhelmed and wishing desperately our mother was holding us in her lap singing “In a Cabin in the Woods.” But that’s not life. Nor is that very interesting.
So—what I have learned in the past six months is this: (if you’re even still reading…well, frankly even if you’re not, I’ve still learned it) Adulthood is not a constant state of existence. And that secretly, no matter our age, we’re all just kids working our asses off to be adults.
Upon graduating from college and not feeling the least bit more like a grown-up, I asked my mom when she started feeling like an adult. She said, “I’ll let you know.”
An adult-sized kid learning about growing up
28 Jun 2011 2 Comments
Hello reader–
Welcome to my blog–what an unfortunate word, blog. It sounds very unappealing.
I was very anti-blog for a long time but decided to try one when my life took a very unexpected shortcut into the labyrinth of Adulthood and I figured maybe this is a good way for all us adult-sized kids to learn the path together.
Before January of this year I was like every other post-college- 20-something, taking small, incremental steps into Adulthood: living on one’s own, bills, taxes, job hunting, etc. but under the impression I hadn’t quite earned the title of “Adult”–mostly because I didn’t really feel like one.
Frankly, I’m not sure anyone actually feels like they’re a true grown-up: not all the time anyway.
Adulthood is weird.
