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Less Virtual, More Reality

posted 4th August 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

One of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips is the one where Calvin points out that nothing helps a bad mood as much as spreading it around. It’s funny because it’s true.

As an official member of the unemployed class (my internship has finally ended) the one upside to my unemployment is that a lot of my friends are too. This makes me feel like less of a loser.

If my brilliant, funny, talented friends are having as hard a time finding a job as I am, well, clearly I’m not the problem. Right? Right!?

While I find a certain comfort in my friends unemployment (although I hope they all find fabulous jobs), what I’ve lately found discomforting is Facebook. This tool for connecting both friends and vague acquaintances can sometimes feel like a tool for self-flagellation when my feed informs me of a flurry of recent nuptials, births, home purchases, exotic vacations, law school acceptances and other oh so joyous occasions.

Retch.

It’s not so much that I want what they have. It’s just that sometimes, at the risk of sounding petty, I get tired of being happy for other people. It’s not a jealousy thing. In fact, I’m perfectly content with their happiness. But I’d be more content if they chose to be happy somewhere else.

Once again in the misery loves company vein, I find that I’m not alone in this sentiment. A good friend of mine recently admitted that she rarely logs into Facebook because constantly being inundated with other people’s good news depresses her. Her own closet admission, makes me wonder, why can something as banal as Facebook be so, well, irksome when you’re in flux?

As my friend Rachel pointed out to me recently, “It can be annoying to see happy little family photos, just as I’m sure it can be annoying for my friends to see happy singleton photos when they are married. There’s such a thing as TMI and Facebook is great at it.”

But I think that’s only half the story.

For the most part, what Facebook gives us is the happy bits of people’s lives.

It doesn’t tell us that the acquaintance who just got married doesn’t really love her husband, but that she gave into social pressure and settled. It doesn’t tell us that the person who seems ebullient over his law school acceptance doesn’t actually want to go to law school. In other words, Facebook is like the reality television of life – what it presents is real, but edited down and filtered to present one’s best possible self. And inundated with the perception that people we at least sort of know somehow manage to navigate life without the banal everyday lows of a quarterlife crisis, can leave those of us in the depths of our QLC feeling like a starving kid staring through a window at the rest of the world devouring a five star feast: hollow.

There is something to be said of using willful ignorance to preserve one’s sanity. In much the same way that the 24 hour news cycle has given us information without context that study after study has shown only serves to amplify mistrust and fear, I think the constant overexposure into windows of acquaintances lives can convince us that everyone else is happier and more together than they really are.

I’ve given this some thought and I’ve decided that to both preserve my own sanity as well as my ability to appreciate other people’s joy I’m going to dial down my exposure to the virtual reality of Facebook.

I’m going to spend more of my time living life instead of Facebooking about it.


photocred: Marius!!

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Normal People Food Kills Me

posted 30th July 2009    Written by: Marisa    CATEGORY: All Posts, Marisa, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

In three days I will no longer have health insurance.

…WHAT?!!!…

It’s true; in three days I will be joining the other uninsured 47 million United States citizens.  The available COBRA option given to people in my situation is still too expensive for this funemployment gal and I have no choice but to be uninsured.   And I know I’m freaking out more so than most people in this situation.

Yes, I am young and for the most part healthy, but I am sadly unique when compared to the health needs for the average person.

I have severe food allergies.  And by severe I mean I’ve been to the ER twice due to anaphylactic shock.  I am unique all right.

In fact, I’m actually part of a very small percentage of adults who have severe food allergies past the age of 25.  I’m part of a percentage of only 250,000 in this country who have a severe food allergy to one or all of the seven major food allergies: milk, eggs, soy, peanuts, shellfish, tree nuts/nuts and wheat.  Yay for me, I have four out of the seven.

I didn’t grow up with these food allergies though.  It started at 16 with a reaction to clams while attending a formal, and then when I was 20 to a granola peanut butter bar during one of my English Lit. classes.  Both times I was saved at the ER.  Both times I had health insurance.  Then most recently after some extensive testing, soy and tree nuts came up as positives.

With these results and finding out exactly what was in processed food, I had to basically teach myself how to eat again.

My last visit to the ER was in February of this year.  My eye started to swell while I was at a Jazz club with some of my friends and I knew exactly then what I had to do.  My ER visits record had been swept clean since I moved to Portland, almost three years without a visit.  Luckily this visit wasn’t as life threatening as the past two but nonetheless, just as stressful and scary at times.

I don’t know what to do now.  I can panic I suppose.  Well, I know I will here and there but I don’t want this worry to consume my every day life.  I have my Benadryl, I have my epi-pen and I have some sanity about me whenever I get a reaction.  However, rationality and logic are not always present.  I’m scared shitless when I really think about it. I live alone, I AM alone.  And I don’t think my cat Sophie will be able to dial 911 from my cell phone.

I guess the point of this post was to expunge some of my worries and stress that involve such a huge part of my life.  My current journey to live a happy life has bumps and this large bump will never go away.  It’s the permanent speed bump that slows me down here.

I do have hope though. On the news a few weeks ago I witnessed President Obama hug a woman who had cancer of the kidneys and who was also unemployed and uninsured.  This gesture and his speech had such an impact, I actually have hope that somehow or someway I will be able to afford healthcare soon.

But for now it’s like any other day, pursuing and living a happy life, one free of ER visits and one that will always miss peanut butter like crazy.


photo credit: Bob.Fornal

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It’s a Whole New World. Just not Disney-Aladdin-style.

posted 16th July 2009    Written by: Marisa    CATEGORY: All Posts, Marisa, Money, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

INTRODUCING MARISA

Self-realization is key.

I ignored self-realization last year despite knowing that I was unhappy with my career because it was just easier to stay with the comfort of a steady paycheck and not change.  I think fate changed it for me instead.

This past March I was “let go” from my job. It wasn’t really shocking or unexpected; I did the numbers and knew that despite company cutbacks my position was probably next and it was.

I decided to enjoy myself with this sudden free time.  I slept late, did absolutely nothing for days on end and lounged like I had never lounged in my life.  And after waking up very late one day, I looked at myself.  I was one lazy hot mess of nothing.  I had friends, great people who were happy with their lives who were not like this! I became instantly jealous.  It was time to change.

But it’s hard work.

Insecurity plagues everything and hides around every corner.  I was stuck somewhere in between the excitement of being able to do anything I’ve ever wanted and the depressing nature that I just lost my job and I was alone.

I had a choice to make.  Was I bound to be that horribly depressing creature on my couch or was I to get going and make plans that challenged me intellectually, physically and even emotionally?

I chose to do something that I’ve always dreamed of doing.  I booked a flight to Austin for SXSW.  If you don’t know SXSW, it’s an indie-rock fangirl’s dream.  I decided that visiting SXSW was going to be the beginning of my new life.  It was time. So I flew to Austin, had some of the best times of my life along with meeting some amazing people, and came back to Portland.  I also booked my first drum lesson.  And guess what, this girl has some skillz (that’s what my teacher says, I’m only quoting).

So, the question here: Am I happy? It’s the beginning of a beautiful summer here in Portland.  There’s new life, new friends and new experiences.  I am happy.  I’m happy enough at the moment we’ll say. However, I struggle with the pursuit of finding a new job.  I struggle with finding a balance of the positive and the negative.

Things are not going to be happy go-lucky all the time.  I recognize that, I even respect that, because true life is never without the crap and the bullshit that this world throws at us.  I get it.

But I’ve started something too big to ignore, too big for complacency.  I can have those crap days, but they’re not going to keep me down.  It’s begun, this journey. It’s going to be never ending, I know that now. The person I am today is not the same person I was three months ago.

Well, I’m still the same crazy cranberry, indie-rock, fabric loving girl… I just smile A LOT more.

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