Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead. With Reverb 10 – and the 31 prompts our authors have created for you – you’ll have support on your journey.
Along with seemingly everybody else, I have decided to hop on this Reverb10 bandwagon. Not only do I find it a great way to end the year, I have also had a very hard time finding something to blog about what with my living in limbo for the past three months, so getting a writing prompt every day for a month is perfect for getting my blogging mojo back. I am a little late to this as I only just found out about Reverb10 yesterday but I’ll catch up with the prompts tomorrow.
December 1 – One word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
Change. Change is the word that perfectly describes 2010 for me. This year I finished graduated school, and moved away from Heidelberg where I lived for most of the past eight years. I am no longer a graduate student. I have not yet found a job but I feel like this year is when I really stopped being a kid. I know, I’m 27 years old. I haven’t been a kid in a very long time. But at the same time, being a college student, you very much live in this bubble between being a kid and an adult. You are an adult, but at the same time, you are still growing up. Being in college is still very much a honeymoon phase. Only afterward does the reality of being an adult really hit you in the face. This year, my time of being a student ended. I left the city the I called home for many years and along with it a few people that have become close friends to me. I am job hunting. I have traded in the hoodies and flip flops for the suit and high heels. I’ve grown up. And I am not sure if I am entirely comfortable in my new identity.
Direction. The word that I would like to capture 2011 for me is direction. Right now, I very much feel like I am somewhere in between. Not a student anymore but not working yet. I have been applying for jobs and I know that eventually I will find one and have to decide whether that is the job I want to do for the next year or three. I will have to decide if that is the direction I want my career to take. Sometimes this pressure of having to make a decision feels paralyzing. Like if I could just hold my breath, maybe time will stop and I will not have to make this decision. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I am still waiting for the moment when I realize I have it all figured out. When I finally know what I am doing, instead of just drifting along. When I finally decide what it is I want to be doing. At the same time, I feel like everything is going to work out okay in the end. I remind myself that just because I choose a job now does not mean I have to stick with it for the rest of my life. I try to take weight off the decision I have to make, make it more insignificant than it feels right now. Look at it as many little steps instead of one huge jump. Because that? Is kind of terrifying. Many little steps are manageable. I hope that 2011 will be the year that I find my way. A road that I will feel comfortable on and that I will enjoy traveling. I hope that 2011 will give me a direction in life, something that I am lacking right now.
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Are you participating in Reverb10? Make sure to leave a link to your blog. And please check back tomorrow for the prompts from December 2nd and 3rd.
I can totally relate to your feelings of feeling in this bubble between kid and adult. Finishing school/university and finding a job is one of the biggest transitions in life, IMHO.
But I am really looking forward to see what 2011 holds for you – careerwise and in regards to growing up and feeling like an adult. :)
Welcome to Reverb! I look forward to reading your answers throughout the rest of the month :)
I feel much the same away about not yet being an adult. I have a job, a house, grown up things, good wines on the rack, a husband and two dogs and a car payment and yet still, I feel like I’m playing dress up and like it’s all a game. My brain just feels like it always has – silly and a little immature and unsure about everything. I might do grown up things, but still – I don’t feel like a grown up.
Im 41, married with 2 kids, and I still sometimes feel the trappings of adulthood a bit chafing. I wish you luck in your job hunt and in the years to come as well.