Unprepared

Hello. My name is Lauren- welcome to my blog.

Generally speaking, I tend to get pretty excited about things. I’m a big sucker for anything that makes me feel hopeful and I’m always looking to the next thing to make me feel that way. Honestly, I’m pretty excited about this blog. I want it to be something for me that I can’t even quantify yet, and that makes me hopeful. But do I know what I’m doing? Do I have a solid plan of any kind? Not a chance.

This isn’t to say that I’m not a planner, or that I’m one of those spontaneous people that flits through life jumping from one exciting (but maybe not so fruitful) venture to the next, in fact, I’m pretty much the complete polar opposite. I want to have well laid plans. I want things to work out the way I envision them when they first come into my mind and make me so excited and hopeful. But so far, life hasn’t worked out that way for me.

My story isn’t particularly special or unique, but I was one of many children of the 90’s who was sold the lie (as well intentioned as I’m completely sure it was) that doing well in school, getting into a university (heck, even community college was ok) would lead to a “successful” life. If we all would just stick to the straight and narrow (get good grades, DARE not to do drugs etc) we could end up happy and productive members of society. I bought into this plan 100%. It made me hopeful and excited. I followed the plan: did well in school, took Honors and AP classes and even participated in Model United Nations. I ended up at a perfectly acceptable local university and graduated with honors….

And then I was absolutely unprepared when I found myself barely able to dog paddle in the ocean of real life. Well, maybe at the time it wasn’t that dramatic. But looking back now (5 years later) and being completely honest with myself, I had no plan and the plan I had been following led to a dead end. I know that there are plenty of people that could point to lots of things I did wrong that led me to this point, and that maybe it wasn’t the plan laid out by my third grade teacher that was really the problem, but rather, it was me. I’m willing to accept that, to a certain degree. But maybe more on that at a different time. Bottom line: I graduated from college with a degree in Political Science and about three years of work experience at Disneyland and no direction.

Undoubtedly, things have happened between now and then that I am proud of and that I am grateful for. What I mean to say (and maybe it’s just a lie that I want to believe, but whatever) is that the last 5 years of my life have not been a “waste”. However, if you really lay out where I was 5 years ago vs where I am now, there isn’t a huge difference. So ultimately, I felt unprepared for adulthood and all of its many expectations. I feel somewhat unprepared to write this blog, but this is where I want to begin chronicling my journey to wherever it is I’m “supposed” to be, and, for the moment, it’s giving me that elusive hope that I’ll find it sooner than later.