Growing Pains

I moved to Chicago ten days ago and managed to have an existential crisis between moving boxes.

Moving is overwhelming, as anybody who has ever done it can tell you. Anxiety runs rampant through stuffed paper and mounds of packing tape. Eerily enough, I was calm—during the packing process and through our cross-country roadtrip. There was a tsunami cresting and I was still as it rose, peaceful as the water broke over my head. In between the rise and the fall, that's when I cried.

I'm 23 and have always known my next step. After high school I went to college. During my summers I interned and worked and built my resume. One year post-grad, and there is a wide open horizon. It's terrifying.

Turns out, being 23 feels like that for a lot of people. Somehow, though, it still seems like everyone else has it figured out a little better than I do. 

When I decided to move, my plan was: 1) get to Chicago 2) get a serving job 3) look for a different job once I have stable income 4) prep my law school application, and 5) see where the year takes me.

Ten days in and I've found no job, can't figure out if I could (financially) survive law school, and am questioning everything. Uncertainty rules my life and it does not feel like hope or possibility, it feels paralyzing.

I'm in awe of people who know what they want to do, and go do it. I'm plagued by doubt and worry that I'll wake up two years post JD and be too deep in debt to career switch.

It hurts to leave my life behind and it hurts to be in the dark about my supposedly bright future. But all the pain means I'm growing, right?

I wanted a step-by-step guide to figuring out your twenties, but haven't found one yet. I'm hoping through my honest, journal-style posts, I will piece together one for myself and future twenty-somethings.

Here, I'll post revelations, maybe advice I find, and the process of becoming a local in the second largest city in the United States. Wish me luck.

Lots of love,

K