A Little Follow-Through

For almost a year now, I've been contributing articles to local teen magazines. I never really thought I'd be doing it, but I find myself enjoying coming up with possible problems that young girls might face in their daily lives and giving out helpful tips to solve them: What do I do when I find myself face-to-face with my crush? How do I ask a guy out without seeming too forward? Why won't my parents cut me some slack? How do I balance my time between school and friends? 


It's surprisingly fun to think up these things and to point the way. It's fulfilling to know that in my own little way I'm helping kids and teenagers deal with the things that stress them out. 


But here's my problem: how do I take my own advice? 

And What A Week It's Been

You know how sometimes you have weeks that go by where you feel like you didn't do anything new or exciting or productive?


Well for me, this wasn't one of them.

One Year Later

I never thought it would come to this. I never even really thought about it. I just sort of assumed--a little pridefully, I admit, but without really giving it all that much thought--that when I finished school I'd go off and begin my life as a successful Woman of the World.


In the back of my head (you know that part of the mind where imagination and reality become difficult to separate? It's that place you don't show other people, that idealistic little spot where you truly believe all your dreams can and will come true against all odds, given time and opportunity), I saw myself with my own place, my own car, and an awesome, well-paying job. I was toned, Solenn Heussaff-style. I had a walk-in closet. I was going on a book tour for my internationally-acclaimed novel. I read Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, and other intellectual stuff. I could quote from the best literary works. I was traveling the world.


Call me a dreamer, but come on. Didn't you have those illusions, too?


Hell, don't you still?


And yet here I am, a full year after graduation, and I find that not much has changed at all.