Hush Now, Child

I want very much — and I’m going to be careful with my words here — to keep moving fast for as long as possible. It feels like there’s this tacit agreement among young people to self-identify via a metropolitan area and Nicki Minaj and buzztopic smalltalk and it can be discouraging. Not that I’m angry at The Man, but after a certain amount of time I think any sane human would ask why these are the things we’re focused on as a demographic. Why we’re all huddled around the fire-in-a-trashcan conversations about post-cultural placeholder items like Real Housewives of My Ass. And the endless wait for someone to admit that OFWGKTA is a 7 out of 10. How many more months are we gonna have to sit through a bunch of cool white people freaking out over a bunch of young black guys with decent rhyming ability cashing in on the Urban Outfitters aesthetic? It’s waiting for a bus in the rain.

I had a conversation with someone a while back that was initially supposed to be me asking someone smarter than I am what a career even is and what I should consider doing with my life, but turned into us talking about how difficult it is to take advice from people who “know what they’re doing” when you relate to so little of what’s being done. She didn’t have a ton of answers for me to be honest, and I still have a lot more questions in that regard, but I guess that’s just called growing up in 2k12. No one knows. Throw all of the things at the wall, maybe .01 of them will stick.

It’s hard to live a deliberate life that way, though, and really it’s hard to do anything deliberately when you’re surrounded by people doing things that way.

But I think the point here is that I’m tired and incensed at the same time. And that’s an important thing to acknowledge when you’re young, you know what I mean? I’m tired probably in the way that only a too-optimistic person can be tired, but the incensed part is huge.

I don’t want to slow down at all. I want to speed up. And read everything. And see everything. And think all of the things.

And maybe light some fires along the way.

It’s such a funny little limbo.

And I may be here a while.