If you’re anything like me, 2020 left you dazed, confused, and significantly more anxious than ever.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, my life was looking up. In early 2020, I was in my last semester of college, student teaching at a middle school, and planning for my life after graduation in April of 2020. While teaching was always my backup plan (mainly because I was sick of the look I received after telling people I wanted to pursue writing with my English degree, not teaching), getting practical experience in the classroom boosted my confidence and assured me that I was ready to enter the workforce.
I felt capable of embarking on adulthood, stable enough to ditch the training wheels provided by University and ready to ride off into the sunset with my newfound freedom. I was even planning to move to Madrid, Spain, where my childhood best friend and I would teach English as a foreign language and finally get to live the nomadic fantasy we had been spinning since we were kids. My dreams were turning into my reality.
Then COVID-19 happened. And life as we knew it stopped completely.
My college graduation came and went with little pomp and no circumstance. The summer passed by in a flurry of doubt, unemployment checks, and a healthy dose of nihilism. Having to face mortality so brutally and unexpectedly really forced me to face the future I was building for myself and made me question what it was I truly wanted to do or be for the rest of my life. By the time fall came around, and my plane to Spain left without me, it seemed like everyone around me was easily able to shake off the horror that life had become and carry on with their plans from before the pandemic, while I had full-on faceplanted, sustaining major wounds to my ego. I tried to find a job on the typical job-posting sites while I waited out the year until I could apply to teach in Madrid again for 2021, but when logging on started to remind me of those segments in old cartoons when the main character arrives in a ghost town and is greeted by a single tumbleweed blowing across their path, I decided to call it quits and wait out the rest of the year taking odd jobs where I could find them.
Then, left with too much time and no prospects, I changed my mind. No one needed writers, teachers were (and still are) severely overworked and underpaid, and it seems like everyone needs a therapist. I have always found psychology interesting (I always cite this as my reason for being an avid reader; I can’t help it, I’m nosy!), so I did some research on what grad school would be like if I were to pursue psychology. It seemed easy, in terms of Master’s programs, so in the winter semester of this year I took some psychology classes at the university from which I graduated in 2020, but at the end of the term, I still wasn’t fully convinced I could see myself doing this for the rest of my life.
That’s when it hit me. I have so many interests: teaching, writing, reading, psychology, but when I tell myself to pick one to do “for the rest of my life,” that’s when the anxiety starts. What if “the rest of my life” is only a few more months? Will I have spent enough time with the people I love? Will I have seen all the things I want to see?
Historically, facing loss at such a caliber as we have in 2020 has forced us to really examine the big picture of our lives. The rise of Existentialism, an anxious philosophy that questions the value and meaning of human existence, in Paris, France (and globally) after World War II seemed the natural perspective for a traumatized generation. So, given that we Millenials and Gen-Z are coming of age during a pandemic AND an increasingly alarming climate crisis, these anxieties and questions which plague me (excuse the terminology…too soon?) weigh me down significantly, because “the rest of my life” no longer feels like such a wide time frame.
The culmination of all that, the anticipation, the longing, the anxiety, all brings me here. To the summer of 2021. Starting over, again.
On my nightly drive home a few weeks ago a song came on while my playlist was on shuffle. It’s a long playlist, something like 250 songs. Whenever this song comes on it makes me feel like I’m on the precipice of something great. And I don’t mean “great” as in one level above “good,” I mean “great” as in “big,” maybe even “huge.” While the song was reaching its crescendo I was feeling rather reminiscent of who I was before this pandemic, before life sucked and all good things were ruined. For some reason, I had the urge to yell at the top of my lungs, out the windows over my sleepy hometown, “I’m a Writer!”. It felt good, so I did it again. And again. Another time, this time even louder.
“I’M A WRITER!”