Keep On Truckin'

It takes some time away to realise the important things in life.
Like how super gay my new website theme is.
What the hell was I thinking.

Anyway, someone told me earlier in the year that being 22 is the worst year of your life. Not only are you officially an adult according to legal and social laws but you start to get that panicky itch most young people get if they don't feel comfortable in their life.

I have that itch.

I finished university last year with the most optimistic outlook on life. I had my degrees, I had a nice resume, I had time to contemplate where I was going with my life.

Now it's halfway through the year and I still have all of those things but they seem less useful than they did 6 months ago. And I'm not the only one in this boat. I have numerous friends and acquaintances in the same shitty boat. It's not a bad boat either. Comfy, reliable, we can see where we are going; it just doesn't stop us from realizing we're all sitting in this tight space going in one direction with no control and you either have to decide if this is the right river you want to go down or should I jump into the water right now and take my chances with the unknown.

I'm choosing to sit in the boat for a while until some of the other small comfy boats sailing past start to look better than mine.

It's a tough world out there you know.

I applied for two graduate positions earlier this year with two well respected and well known companies, and as you can probably tell from the weird boat metaphors, they did not go well. I was lucky enough to experience two different types of disappointment.

Now the first company was upfront with me, didn't play around, and straight up said "Thanks, but fuck off". Concise. No fuss. I like it. I only had to wait 2 weeks to find out I wasn't good enough, but at least I could tell from the speed of the rejection that there were a tonne of other applicants and I was not shiny enough to be collected.

The second company was almost as good and took the same 2 weeks to consider me before sending out an automated message saying "Thanks, here's a test we want you to take to make sure you're not stupid", which is an interesting thing to do for someone with two Bachelor degrees and a long list of experience in different fields but what the hell, I'm awesome, this should be easy.

The next four weeks was a back and forth of "Do this please. Thank you. You're smart! Do it again!" where they sent me strange tests and games to challenge my brain. They even sent me feedback saying I was in the top 20% of average results, which was kind of them. So by the time I told my parents I was in the with a shot and was confidentially planning my life for the rest of the year I was pretty high and mighty when I got kicked off the pedestal.

Over a month spent being told I'm awesome and I get told I'm still not good enough. I really couldn't tell which hurt more. The straight up NO or the long goodbye.

That's a lie, I totally can; it was the second one.

It makes the whole 'Tell them you don't like them straight away rather than string them along' advice people give to those relationships you're not sure you want to be in. Rip off the band-aid quick! Bam!

And that's where I'm at. Exactly where I was a year ago except no assignments and no idea what might happen next.

Thank god for video games.