appreciationtime asked: I'm a confused and insecure freshman in college and I'm not really sure how to get out of this funk. How the heck were you able to get an awesome job and the opportunity to LIVE in New York and be awesome!? I know I gotta keep da faith, I just don't know how to get from point A to point B.
Listen, one thing you need to understand is that according to some scientists, our brains aren’t even fully developed until we’re like, 25 years old. That’s old as hell to be starting your life but it kinda makes sense. Cuz what happens for most American children probably is that they go to kindergarten and then they go to grade school, middle school, high school and then college and it’s only during like, you’re junior or senior year that you even begin to imagine a real, adult life that doesn’t involve going to sit in some dumb-ass school desk all day. And you stop buying stuff with a swipe card and you maybe get a credit card and max it out really quickly and the next thing you know, you’re doing reception at a small architecture firm for four years and you come home to your 1-br apartment and your cat that sometimes you don’t even like and you’re like, “Wait. Is this being an adult?”
Imma be honest, in my personal story, I had no set plan of getting from point A to B, and I still think I’m on the way to B. All I knew for the entirety of my time out of school were two things: a) I never wanted a job that would make me wear business casual and b) If I ever moved anywhere it would only be to New York.
Knowing those two things about what I wanted in my life kind of narrowed down my choices. I don’t call myself a writer. Yes, I write words on the internet every day and get paid for it and I do it all from the comfort of my Levis, but basically I put my skills together with my interests and boom, here I am. I think writers are people who want to write books. Fuck a book.
I think my greatest skill is effective communication and I think my biggest interest (at this juncture) is having a cool job. Hence, I somehow became the Associate Editor of buzzworthy.mtv.com. I started freelance writing in Chicago because writing has always come very easily to me. From that point, I built up a mini portfolio of different weekly (mostly unpaid) writing gigs. After a couple years of building a (frankly) rather sparse portfolio, I tried out for the MTV TJ competition (because I feel another strength of mine is creating unique, humorous content on the internet and I thought I’d finally meet Hanson if I won), was a runner up, and then got connected to Buzzworthy via an ex-boyfriend’s high school friend that worked at the company. I proved myself for eight months by contributing to the blog daily as a staff writer while maintaining a full-time job (but also with the very generous support of my boss who remains one of the best men I’ve ever met). When the opportunity came to interview for this new position, I took it and ran. The moment I got that call asking my to apply for the job I knew everything was going to change.
But I still don’t think I’ve reached point B. Everything is day to day. If you told me as a college freshman that I’d be typing this blog in my bed on the Upper East Side getting ready to retire for the night before I go to work in Times Square tomorrow, I never would have believed it. But it’s about listening to your intuition and what you really want to do.
Recognize what you’re good at. Listen when you’ve heard a compliment more than once. Ever since I was little I was always getting compliments from teachers regarding my writing. To me, it was nothing. It flew out of me. Took me the least amount of time, and I always got As. But the question now is, how do I keep honing that skill? What is the next level from here?
I keep thinking lately that my dream job might be a writer on SNL. This is a new dream job for me. And maybe some people have had this as their dream job forever. Whatever, NMP, we’re all allowed to start a new dream job whenever we want. I’ve never written comedy. I’ve never taken an improv class. But I’m starting to put those wheels in motion, if only at first in my head, because despite the gross stereotypes around women in comedy that I’m finding it difficult to stop caring about (they’re all lezbos/ugly/hyper feminists/they only make vagina jokes), it is an area that I want to explore. I want to be #foreverlaughing. It is my favorite activity.
Anyway, TL;DR, but you have time to figure it out. Try the shit out of everything in college. Wherever you’re interests lie, explore those zones. And don’t be shy about sharing with other people what you’re good at. Hone your craft. But as usual, don’t be an asshole.
