Having It Together Is Great, But Having It Together Is Also Lame
Do you like getting annoyed at strangers on the internet? We’ve already cross-posted the Most Hated Article on the internet today, but please let us now introduce you to the Second Most Hated Article. The gist: A 22-year-old woman with a desk job and a car and a retirement plan laments her stability and grieves for the life she could be living, broke and underemployed and struggling, but in a romantic way. Some people want to smack her for this. I don’t, because I know in a year or two she’s going to think of this essay and want to smack herself. She’ll probably be unemployed and crashing on her parents’ couch when she does it. This is not a sick wish for her, just a statement that situations change quickly and there’s plenty of time for us all to hit bottom, again and again and again.
Sometimes I dream about a desk job and a car and a stable retirement fund, but nobody smacks me. (At least not without my permission)
It’s just a kind of poorly written article by a girl who wanted to be a journalist and now realizes that her salary job for a college review website is kind of lame.
Ugh, reading that made me cringe so hard for the person she’s going to be in just a few years. And where does she think her un- or under-employed friends are getting money to travel and have all these adventures? Unemployment for me was horrible and nerve-wracking and I never went out or did anything for fear of losing my savings. I’ve worked desk jobs since graduating college and have gotten to travel more in the past few years than I ever could working three part-time jobs and living her vision of the “romantic” 22-year-old’s life.
You know you’re not 22 anymore when you realize how horrible it would be to write an article lamenting your well-paying full time job status in the middle of a recession.
@Koko Goldstein I AM 22, and I realized how horrible this is. Even on the days when I can’t stand my job (admin assistant to a bunch of micromanaging crazies!) I am grateful for my job, which allows me to pay my own bills and save a bit and so on. And sure, my graduate student opera-writing bar mitzvah-tutoring roommate may have the more “fun” looking lifestyle for a 20-some, but she is totally jealous of my ability to always know I’ll have my rent money on time and my savings and 403(b) accounts and my health and dental insurance. Sure, she’s working on her art, but I’m volunteering and reading books for fun and going out to dinner when I want to, and I can afford to do these things! Because I’m employed!
There is so much to hate in this article it’s hard to even start! I guess my choice would be the fact that her lady journalist inspirations are Carrie Bradshaw and Harriet the Spy.
Also I knew immediately that the Gawker response article would be written by HamNo, and I was not disappointed.
I’m 22 as well, and I would love to be in her position! I just make enough to pay my bills but I have almost no savings. This life gets old, fast.
I experienced a lot of secondhand embarrassment reading that post. I really hope she does read that post in the not-too-distant future and wants to smack herself for it, but something tells me she’ll be just fine and might even coast on laurels of Internet-hate for a while.
As someone who currently does it, I wish she would take a year or two and join Americorps, and gain some actual perspective. Nothing quite like living on the poverty line and working to better the communities of those for whom poverty is not at all a choice to be ~closer to art~.
@sockhop Seriously. I am cringing so hard reading this. You couldn’t pay me enough money to be 22 again. So much self indulgence.
I just happen to be watching a documentary on the five-year Russian civil war right now and I realize my dull, pointless day job with benefits and retirement isn’t so bad.
I too got my rad job right out of college (sorry, #humblebrag), but fuck me! You will have to rip it out of my cold, dead hands. Who longs to be a barista living with your mom? I mean, honestly.
Also, I don’t understand what’s stopping her from getting blackout drunk and sleeping with people she shouldn’t like a “normal” 22-year-old.
@Rebecca Pederson@facebook
She has to get up for work in the morning! Hahahahahahahahahaha…
DON’T WORRY, SWEETIE, YOU’LL PROBABLY GET LAID OFF AND BE BROKE LIKE THE REST OF US SOON! :)
A well-paying, full-time job with a 401K at 22? WOE IS YOU. No one has suffered like she has suffered.
This makes me really really glad I’m closer to 30 than 20. Oy.
I mean, it’s just kind of a non-problem: if she truly does want to experience struggle and debt and all those things for whatever reason…can’t she just quit her job?
@werewolfbarmitzvah Riiiight? Hell, she could save money for a year or two, then leave her job to go abroad and teach in a country where her savings would go further. Problem solved!
I feel kind of bad for this girl, because I remember thinking similarly romantic notions about being broke and suffering for my passions (generally dreamed as a teenager, in my middle-class suburban home), but I am now so incredibly thankful that I picked the “safe” path. I somehow thought that I would be broke in my 20s but then dig myself out into comfort in my 30s, but it’s now obvious to me that my friends who had to finance their 20s exclusively on credit cards, deferred health/life maintenance, and not creating any savings will likely have a much harder time later on, while I’ll get to have the whole REST of my life that I wanted to have. (I’m not saying they won’t get it – but I’m really thankful that, despite my lack of many experiences I hoped to have, I also don’t have to dig myself out of debt ever again, most likely.)