"Believe with all of your heart that you will do what you were made to do."
Klew & Hoven's Book Review- Don't Worry It Gets Worse (That's a title, not a self-evaluation)
Okay so, I don't think you should be surprised by the fact that Hoven and I enjoy reading. We both just finished reading the same book, and we're going to chat about it. My sorority House Mom had a book club. This is kind of like that. Except neither of us is an old lady (but maybe one of us in spirit really is), and we don't meet in the Kappa Delta kitchen and pretend to talk about books while really we're just gossiping and drinking "juice" (scotch).
We both just finished Alida Nugent's Don't Worry, It Gets Worse: One Twentysomething's (Mostly Failed) Attemps at Adulthood
We both just finished Alida Nugent's Don't Worry, It Gets Worse: One Twentysomething's (Mostly Failed) Attemps at Adulthood
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| Photo Credit: the-frenemy.com |
Summary
It's a story of a college graduate who leaves college without any sort of plan (sound familiar?). She started a blog (sound really familiar?), and it took of and eventually landed her a book deal (unfortunately, that part doesn't sound too familiar...yet.). It's basically just a collection of her post grad experiences, and it is SCARY how similar it is to both of our lives.Klew's Thoughts
I just finished reading it last night. I enjoyed it, but it also made me mad. Not really MAD like riot-through-the-streets-with-a-torch mad, more like why-didn't-I-think-of-this-first mad. I felt at some points that she had read my mind to craft a thought. That's how close to home this bad boy hit. It was comforting, because now I see that it's not just me who is this much of a disaster after college. Overall, I definitely recommend it to any friend who feels like she has no control over anything in her life. This will speak to you. This will make you feel like everything will be okay.Hoven's Thoughts
I had begged Klew to read this book for months, after one of my voracious reader friends lent it to me. Ever the optimist that I am, this book didn't make me so much as mad, as much as it made me convinced "yes I can do this too!"Nugent covers reluctantly moving back home after college (I am queen of this club), trying to find a job with an English degree (I am on the executive director board of this club), but she also writes about how important it is to find passion in life, and keep that passion alive. I don't get to write in my day job, but I get to write here. That keeps the dream alive.
Nugent also is a few steps ahead of Klew and me, not only in the fact she is a published author, but is a few years into friends getting married and life getting even more complicated and distant from the safe havens of your parent's car insurance and pow wows with your college mentor. I constantly look for mentors and models in life- I am as apt to trailblaze as I am to copycat, to be completely, if unflatteringly, honest. I like seeing myself, or possible versions of myself, in others, and Nugent offered a few futures I wouldn't mind, as well as a few I'll avoid like the bubonic plague.
If you are a creative-y type wishing your career would embrace and nurture that sweet little baby bird creative brilliant genius-in-waiting soul of yours, this book will feel like a sharp pinch and a hug. But even if that isn't your gig, there is something universal about the aimlessness of your 20s in the 2000s. This book gets that, it gets you.
klew's return to unemployment
So yeah, I quit my job.
No, I don't have anything else lined up.
Yes, I realize "it's easier to get a job when you have a job."
Yes, I'm still actively looking for a job.
Yes, I understand this means I no longer have income.
I really tried to like my job. I know everyone says that nobody's first job out of college is ideal, and I totally get that. And for a while, the actual WORK I was doing WAS ideal. I was handed my own major fashion blog right out of college for God's sake. It's every aspiring writer's dream! I figured yeah, the work environment is not ideal, but I'm learning so much and this is such great work, I'll try to learn to love it.
And I tried to love it. I really did. I tried everything. I tried getting friends to come interview for jobs so that I would have someone in the office to talk to. I tried leaving the office to work from Starbucks to get a little relief. I tried making friends with my co-workers. No matter what I tried I found myself home, in my bed, crying into the phone as I told my friends how much I hated my job.
You guys, I was just so unhappy. I was in an environment that at this point I can only explain as toxic. For those that know me, you know that I have no problems making friends. I know no stranger. I have been at my job for 7 months and I have made one friend. One. And yeah, I get it, you don't HAVE to be friends with your co-workers, but my co-workers and I had nothing in common. I feel like they took one look at my sparkly, floral-print, Disney-watching, Beyoncé-loving, cheerleading self and completely wrote me off as someone they did not want to know.
It's one thing to not like being at your job, but it's a whole other thing when it is all-consuming. I would come home from work crying about how unhappy I was, and I wouldn't be able to enjoy my weekend because I was too busy dreading going back to work on Monday.
I was also disrespected at times. People would roll their eyes when I spoke or refer to me as "just the intern." I was called a "Valley Girl" in a meeting once. I even had a co-worker make fun of me for the fact that I live with my parents.
I am a smart girl. Yeah I wish I lived my life wearing Cinderella's ball gown, but I also got a 31 on my ACT. I am a good writer and a very fast worker, and I have been known to be able to lead and motivate others because of my compassion for other people. I do not deserve to be disrespected.
A few weeks ago I had a very depressing revelation:
For the majority of my life I have been known as a person who has the ability to bring joy to others. It is a quality that I am immensely proud of. It's probably my favorite thing about myself. I realized that I was losing my ability to make other people happy. I wasn't making anybody laugh, and my friends were constantly needing to "check up on me," and tell me they were "worried about me." This is unacceptable. If I can't fulfill the job that I feel like I exist to fulfill, then what the hell am I doing? I knew it was time to get out. Time to take a step back, time to take time to recharge and start bringing joy to others again. I can't go on living my life in a situation where I am a "downer." Just like "klew" and "edgy," or "klew" and "hipster," or "klew" and "math," "Klew" and "downer" are never words you should find in the same sentence.
I thought people were going to tell me it was a stupid idea to quit my job without anything else lined up. I mean yeah, it's not exactly practical. I know that (I'm an intelligent person, remember?) I thought I was going to get a lecture from everyone I knew.
But the response I got was completely the opposite. I had so many people tell me how happy they were for me. My closest friends were overjoyed because they "have hated to watch me deteriorate" (this sent me into a meltdown of epic proportions. I am really lost right now you guys). I have had an overwhelming amount of support and a lot of people tell me that it's really commendable. I had someone tell me that "anybody can identify when they're unhappy. It takes a lot of guts to do something to make a change." My friends have cyber-held me as I cried and told me that I wasn't stupid. They lifted me up when I was at my lowest, and they made me a lot of cookies. They are the best, you guys.
So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make a change. And I guess I never really saw it that way, like it was a courageous thing to do. I always just thought that I was a failure. It's really reassuring to be able to look at it in that way.
I'm still a bit of a disaster. I really have no plan, and I don't know where to start. But at least I can take a step back and re-evaluate what it is that I want, what it is that's going to make me happy, and what it is I want to do with my life.
Also you guys, I can't tell you how exhilarating it is to take that step.
So now here I sit again, in my blue and white room, Cinderella watching over me, deciding what my next move is. Just me and this blog (and now G Chat because I set that up when I started working so that's a plus I guess.)
It's like that Albus Dumbledore quote:
So here I am. Remembering to turn on the light.
365 Lovely Thoughts: #197
"Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy."
-Gretta Brooker Palmer
We got tickets to jimmy fallon
Okay, so I’m not sure if you know this, but Jesse, Lauren and I are going to New York City in August. We're seeing Aladdin, Cinderella, and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (Yeah. We bought tickets to that the DAY AFTER it won the TONY. We're good at what we do). The whole time we've been planning this trip we've been daydreaming about the possibility of going to see The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. I've heard it's pretty complicated to get tickets, so we’ve been STALKING Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for about 2 months now for inside information. I follow them on all Social Media outlets and have read COUNTLESS articles about acquiring tickets to see the show.
WE DID IT. WE GOT TICKETS TO FALLON! OMG!
I still can’t believe it. So on August 14th I’m probably going to have Pizza for lunch, go see Fallon, then go straight to see Cinderella. They might as well re-name it National Klew Day. It's all of my favorite things in one day. I am over the moon.
So now, we're speculating who we think the guest will be. We've been looking up movies releasing around that time, and trying to cross of people we know it WON'T be, since they were just on the show. (One Direction has a concert that night, so it's not going to be them. Don't worry. First thing we checked.)
I have a ton of people that I hope it will be, but frankly I don't really care. WE'RE GOING TO SEE JIMMY FALLON YOU GUYS! THIS IS AMAZING!
Stay tuned for stories of our adventures. I'll write another post about the show! WEEE!!!
Learning the Patterns
So I've been monitoring the ticket website since May, and I've realized he releases tickets one month at a time, and usually releases them at the beginning of the month for the NEXT month (so he released August at the beginning of June). He also sometimes tweets out when the tickets will be released, but he hadn't done that consistently since May. At this point I figured trying to get Fallon tickets was probably going to be a lost cause. I have the “get tickets” website bookmarked and I check it hourly in hopes of gaining information about August Ticket releases. Well yesterday I was half-assedly reading through Twitter and just HAPPENED to stumble upon this:
Hey, pals! We'll be releasing August tickets tomorrow (7/8) at 11:30AM EST. pic.twitter.com/tiohhroy8U
— Fallon Tonight (@FallonTonight) July 7, 2014
YES PEOPLE, IT WAS BY CHANCE THAT I SAW THAT. So last night I recruited like 10 people to help us try to get tickets to Fallon when we’re there in August. We gave them explicit instructions on how to do it, and figured we’d just all try at the same time. I was pretty sure that they go really fast, and you have to just happen to click on it at the right time. I figured it was a LONG SHOT, but what the hell. We had to try!Refresh Refresh Refresh
So This morning I did nothing but refresh the Fallon page from about 10 am to 10:30, as did Lauren. We knew that in order to get tickets online you were going to have to be on the website AT 10:30 sharp. Once 10:30 hit, a lot of us got redirected to an "error" page. Those people are basically the people that don't even make it off the platform in the Hunger Games. About 5 of us (including me) were directed to this “queue” page…it was an automated page saying that we had a spot in line and not to exit from the window or else we’d lose our spot. It also said it would redirect us once it was either a. our turn or b. sold out. I reached this page first, at about 10:35. I kept that open for about 5 minutes, and then it redirected me to the calendar page. I found August 14 and RAPIDFIRE clicked it and filled out all of the information. It only gives you 9 minutes to fill everything out, and I've read stories about people losing their tickets while they're filling everything out because they took too long and other people swooped in and filled them out faster. We thought you were going to need the name and information of everyone in your party, but you don't. You just need information for one person. I wish I could tell you how many days were already empty when I got into the "pick your dates" section, but I was moving so fast that I didn't take the time to make note of anything.Order Confirmed - Commence National Klew Day.
I FREAKED OUT when I got to the confirmation page that said “congratulations! your order has been confirmed!”WE DID IT. WE GOT TICKETS TO FALLON! OMG!
I still can’t believe it. So on August 14th I’m probably going to have Pizza for lunch, go see Fallon, then go straight to see Cinderella. They might as well re-name it National Klew Day. It's all of my favorite things in one day. I am over the moon.
Who's the guest going to be?
So now, we're speculating who we think the guest will be. We've been looking up movies releasing around that time, and trying to cross of people we know it WON'T be, since they were just on the show. (One Direction has a concert that night, so it's not going to be them. Don't worry. First thing we checked.)
I have a ton of people that I hope it will be, but frankly I don't really care. WE'RE GOING TO SEE JIMMY FALLON YOU GUYS! THIS IS AMAZING!
Stay tuned for stories of our adventures. I'll write another post about the show! WEEE!!!
365 Lovely Thoughts: #185
365 LOVELY THOUGHTS: #185
"Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."
