Blasting the Brain Obstruction

I haven't posted anything since September because I am currently experience a crippling bout of writer's block. Yikes, that sounds like some sort of gastrointestinal obstruction, which is kind of what it is - except it's in my brain. So I've decided to write the writer's block right out of my system by, well, writing about it (see what I did just there?)

How to relate this to living in limbo? Well, writer's block is something like limbo and limbo feels a bit like a prolonged case of writer's block, so there you go! Pretty thin, I know, but also truth :)

So, I was reading this article recently on io9.com about writer's block and how to solve it, and I was thinking about the file of story ideas I keep on my computer. Basically I come up with these story ideas that capture my attention and keep me up at night, and for a few days I write like a woman possessed. Then one morning I wake up and read what I wrote and think to myself "what is this garbage?!" and abandon it forever. Now, instead, I save it on this file in case I ever want to come back to it. Sometimes I don't and sometimes I do, and sometimes I take one of the little orphaned stories I've saved and rewrite it or change the name of a character or add little notes to myself. I was thinking about that when the article suggest the exact same solution to the writer's block problem:

Save them in a file, come back to them a year or ten later, and maybe you'll suddenly know how to tackle them. You'll have more experience and a different mindset then. It's possible someone with more stubbornness could make one of those ideas work right away, but probably not - the reason you can't get anywhere with any of them is because they're just not letting you tell the story you really want to tell, down in the murky subconscious.

Interesting thought. Of course, there's another school of thought which would probably advise me to delete that file of short stories and start fresh with a clean slate, mentally and physically. I have trouble letting those ideas go, though. They may be silly and trite, but when I read them I can recall where I was and what I was thinking (or watching or listening to) when I wrote them, and in some of them I can even recapture a whiff of the original moment of inspiration that in which they were born. So I hang on to them, for better or worse.

Well anyway, that's all I got. Go check out the article for yourself - it's really quite informative - or better yet, you could write something for the blog! I'd really appreciate it?

And while you're coming up with brilliant ideas for a blog post for me, consider the 7th reason for writer's block and this wise piece of advise:

You keep imagining all the reasons people are going to say your story sucks, and it paralyzes you. Otherwise known as the Inner Critic - you can't make any choices, because you keep imagining how someone at GoodReads will tear you apart for it later. Actually, the person at GoodReads doesn't exist, and it's just your own internal critic talking here. You'll need that inner voice of scorn for later, when you're revising - but while you're working on a first draft, you have to drown it out, possibly with loud Finnish death metal.

Don't worry, we won't judge you. We really do want to know what you have to say. Just remember, the only thing standing in the way of you and your goals, is you... and your goals.

Good night and good luck.

Failure To Launch

My siblings recently moved out, leaving me to contemplate the fact that I'm still at home. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand I'm somewhat embarrassed about it. I don't want to be a burden to my parents and I don't want people to think that I'm still living with mom and dad because I can't hack it on my own. On the other hand, it's not as if I'm living in the basement, subsisting on potato chips and reruns of Star Trek (though I do occasionally enjoy both chips and Star Trek when the mood strikes me). I'm not a parasite. I have a job and I have plans to eventually go back to school: I even cook dinner once or twice a week! (Yeah, gold star for me) The reality is, though, that I can't move out now even if I wanted to; I'm too poor.

It seems I'm not the only one. Apparently a lot of people in my age group aren't leaving home after graduation like our parents did. So are we Generation Y kids just lazy bums mooching off our folks, or is there a good reason why we haven't flown the nest yet?

Here are some articles I stumbled upon recently that shed some light on the issue. For reasons that will soon become clear, I like number 2 best....

1) Kick those lazy layabouts out! This article posits that adult children aren't leaving home when they should because they've been enjoying the good life at their parent's expense for too long and they don't know how to make it on their own: The Sydney Morning Herald: Boomers go bust over kids

2) Good news! According to this article, adult children leaving home later is not a new trend and, though it may seem strange to our Boomer parents, it's not necessarily a bad thing: The Star: Failure to launch, but is it failure?

3) This one should come as no surprise, given our present economic situation: "In the spring of 2011, 5.9 million young adults aged 25 to 34 lived with their parents, up from 4.7 million before the recession." Time Moneyland: More Young Adults Are Poor, Live With Their Parents

4) Because we're living with our parents, we have more freedom to pick and choose jobs that we enjoy and that allow us to have a life outside of work, rather than having to slave away at jobs that make us miserable just to pay the bills: Huffington Post: "Mils" In The Workplace: Re-Defining 20-Something


Let me know if you come across any other interesting articles about this subject. I have yet to find an article that speaks directly to us as Gen Y-ers; most of them seem to be addressed to our parents and our future employers. As always, feel free to chime in with your first hand experiences!

Left Behind

It's back to school season and I’m coming to terms with being left behind. Granted, I’ve been out of school for almost three years but the first year I was busy with plans to go back to school and trying to find a job to sustain me in the meantime, and the year after I was headed to foreign shores. This year is different though. This year nothing new is going on. I’ve settled into my part-time job and living at home with my parents, and life is a bit dull, but the thing that makes it worst is that my fellow limbo dwellers are on their way to new and exciting adventures. It’s hard not to feel left out.

It’s been a long time since I was perched on the edge of something new and exciting. At first, graduating from college felt like that, but the thrill has worn off and even the dread of an uncertain future has faded. Life is slower now that I don’t have deadlines and due dates to rush towards. Part of me is afraid that its been too long, that I’m getting rusty, out of practice. Part of me wonders how many more back-to-school Septembers will pass me by. How many years will I languish in limbo? Will I ever get off the ground?

Ok, I need some perspective. After all, it hasn’t been that long since I left school. There’s still time. This is only the beginning of my journey. I just have to visualize myself being successful. I will go back to school. I will eventually have a meaningful and fulfilling career. I will not be living with my parents forever.

But in the meantime, how to combat those September blues? What I’d like to do is buy a ticket to some exotic destination, but unfortunately my pocketbook is not in agreement. So do I enroll in a cooking class? Do I take up crocheting again? Maybe I should do some volunteer work; that’s always a sure fire way of doing something productive with your restlessness. The point is I need a mental change of scenery. Instead of sinking into a self-pitying funk, I need to use this time to study the lessons you don’t learn in the classroom. I know that sounds cliche but I also know that I’m not the only limbo dweller to have discovered that there are things you learn about living that they can’t teach you in school, things you can only learn by getting out there and living.

Not that going to school is not living, of course. On that note, I’d like to congratulate and well-wish all you limbo dwellers who are moving out of limbo this Fall. I truly am happy for you, even if you are leaving me behind. And I know that even if you don’t return my calls on weeknights because you’re holed up in some library cubicle trying to stuff knowledge into your brain, we’re still friends.

Practical Passions

Common wisdom says that we should follow our passions. But....how does one go about that, exactly?

In her last post, my wonderful friend Awkward Pen raised an interesting point. When it comes to choosing a career path, she says, why not look at the things we’ve loved doing for inspiration? I certainly know what she means! I spent four years studying biology under the misguided idea that I wanted to be a geneticist when every sign pointed to the fact that I was better suited for something like history or philosophy. Without fail, I did spectacularly well in every elective I took in those subjects, and enjoyed myself thoroughly while doing so. If I’d paid more attention to what I loved doing, I could have been much further along my career path than I am now.

HOWEVER. While I agree with this, there is a caveat that I would add. As I discovered while working as a career counselor, many of us don’t do nearly enough career exploration to begin with. During my time in career services, I spent many hours with a never-ending stream of recent college, university and high school graduates who knew what they liked doing, but didn’t know what they wanted their next step in life to be. Nearly all of them still faced a crucial problem: how did they go about translating what they liked into a job they liked doing?

Let’s face it. The typical academic university course (outside of professional programs such as nursing) is not job specific. Many recent grads know that they enjoy a particular subject area but don’t know much about the jobs that they would be well suited for as a result. I think that the reasons for this are two fold. For many, the progression through each stage of life has up until that point been pretty clear. But when they leave school, there isn’t a giant list of every job possible. Graduates need to do far more of their own research, but many of them don’t know where to start.  

Worse, a lot of university students and graduates don’t have an adequate support system to help them through their career exploration (I say university, as I do not have experience with the college system). Aside from that half-semester careers course you took in high school, exposure to different careers is not built into the educational structure. Now, please don’t misunderstand me: I know that universities do have career offices, career fairs, and many wonderful counselors who are working to help students with the transition from university to work. But in many academic disciplines, educators tend to (most likely unconsciously) emphasize the academic career path, even though the vast majority of their students will not follow them into academia. We often don’t know where to start looking because we simply have not heard about the vast majority of available jobs.

So what can you do? Follow your passions, yes, but if you’re not practical about what you can actually do with them, they won’t lead to much. Instead, try some of the following:

1. Go to your school’s career services office (yes, even as an alumnus). Get to know the counselors. Tell them what you like doing. They’re there to help guide you from those interests to a career that will make use of your skills. Go to their events! Even a brief jaunt through a career fair can start the uncertain limbo denizen off on the right track.

2. Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer! If you’re not sure about the specifics of the area you want to go into, then volunteering is a great way to find out more information. You’ll a) keep busy, something very important for limbo denizens, b) get more of a feel for the working environment and possible career paths and c) find that you might even be able to translate that volunteer position into a job. In addition, some career paths require volunteer/clinical experience before you can study at the graduate level, so this is a great way to get a head start.

3. Do your research. I am not simply referring to career guides. Look at the career listings of various companies, institutions, or organizations. What kinds of positions do they have available? I’m willing to bet that you didn’t know that many of those positions even existed.

4. Ask around. Do you actually know what your uncle does for a living? What about your friend’s mother? Ask the people around you what they do all day long. Ask them about the kinds of people they work with. Ask them if they have any ideas about what you should do. Chances are that the people around you can recognize the skills you have that are applicable to a certain job. Furthermore, they’ll probably be more inclined to let you shadow them on the job, or know someone who you could shadow. You don’t want to discount the many years of experience your parents, relatives and friends have when you’re trying to decide what you want to do with your life.

Once I looked at what I enjoyed doing, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I didn’t want to stay on the science track! But it’s taken me a little bit longer to settle on a career path, and when I did, it happened to be a passing suggestion that my mother had made many, many years ago (and I, of course, dismissed out of hand). What about all of you? Here’s a quick challenge - try and see if you can come up with five jobs that you did not know existed that would make use of at least one skill or interest you have. It’ll be easier than you think it will be!

Limbo Book Club Time!

If you’ve had a chance to read the local Toronto papers recently, you might have found out that  Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford doesn’t know who Margaret Atwood is. Say WHAT? Margaret ATWOOD? Egregious displays of ignorance aside, it took me back to my deep love for her famous book The Handmaid’s Tale. From there I swanned right on over to some Alice Munro, and before long I found myself revisiting long winter days when the messy and emotionally charged lives of D.H. Lawrence’s characters got me through many a dark spell in limbo. When I was living with my parents and feeling cut off from the world, books with richly drawn protagonists helped me to feel as if my own, swirling emotions weren’t so strange and kept me from sinking into depression on many occasions. Sometimes the stories ended well; sometimes they didn’t, but ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ wasn’t the point. The point was that I was able to emotionally connect to the characters, and in doing so, managed to alleviate some of the loneliness that I was going through. So, for those book-loving limbo dwellers out there, what are some books that you have really identified with? I’m no English lit major, so bear with me, but here are a few of mine....

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. This book came to mean more to me as I became more of a feminist, but even my initial reading of it had me in tears.

House of Spirits, by Isabel Allende. For the longest time, I couldn’t understand why my mother’s hispanic family was the way they were. Reading this book, as well as books by other Latin authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Junot Diaz shed a lot of light onto that subject.

Anything in the gothic horror section. A lot of gothic horror relied not upon guts and gore, but psychological paranoia and terrifying suspense. As a result, it delved far more deeply into emotional turmoil. Go for the classics, such as Poe and Lovecraft.

The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri. Having moved countries in my childhood (even if it was from one Western nation to another) has meant a little bit of culture shock. Reading about characters that were torn between the expectations of their families and norms of the culture around them felt as if I was reading about myself.

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy. Remember those downward spirals we’ve talked about before? Yeah, the titular character goes on one. Big time.

The Sickness unto Death, by Søren Kierkegaard. I had to read this for a class on early existentialism. No, I do not normally pick up books like this on my own, although after reading it, I wish I had, and much sooner! Kierkegaard talks about the different kinds of despair so accurately that nearly every page of my copy is covered with notes to the effect of ‘So that’s what I’ve been feeling!’.

Any more? Tell in the comments!

Recovery vs Discovery

Ignoring the fact that this video is a promo for a book about quitting your boring day job to do your dream job, the author, Jonathan Acuff, raises an interesting point: "Instead of asking 'What do I want to do with my life?' you ask, 'what have I done that I loved'"

Ok, remember when I wrote about waiting for lightning to strike? Well, lately I've been trying to think about it a different way. Rather than waiting around for inspiration to give me a smack in the face, I've been trying to actively find my passion by thinking of the things I'm good at and the things that interest me.

For example: I've always loved English. I love writing and reading, and I love studying and analyzing works of literature. Some people absolutely hate that (like my mom for instance - she'd rather be doing equations), but to me there's nothing better. I took four English classes in my last year of high school and that was the year I achieved the highest marks of my high school career. So when I went to college, I immediately signed up as an English major.

I didn't last very long though. I started to panic and think, what am I going to do with an English major? Teach? I don't want to teach! Part of the problem was that I hadn't done my research and I didn't realize that with a first degree in English I could have gone on to do virtually anything at the Masters level. Anyways, I panicked and switched majors, and I've regretted it ever since.

I realize now that I have always known exactly what I wanted to do in life. I want to write. Ever since I became literate, I've been writing or thinking about writing. I write when I'm happy and I write when I'm sad and I write when I'm bored. All I've ever wanted to do was to be a writer, but when it came time to make a decision about my future, I never seriously considered it as a career. "I could never make money at that," I thought to myself, "either I would be an amazing author or a starving mediocre author." I thought that I had to be J.K. Rowling or nothing.

But four years and a first degree later, my passion for writing hasn't changed. Like Acuff says, the process of finding my passion was more about recovery than discovery.
It's really a relief to let go of dreams that are not my own, dreams that have been imposed upon me by the expectations of society, or worming their way into my head on the wings of my parents loving encouragement. I know this is the right path because as soon as I made the decision to pursue it, I felt an abrupt dissipation of anxiety and doubt.

We all know someone who has a job they hate, a job that pays the bills but makes them miserable. You might be working at a job like that right now. Is it really worth doing something you don't love just to secure a steady paycheck? Don't get me wrong; I don't particularly want to starve for my craft, but don't you find that when you love something you tend to be successful at it? There are ways to make money while following your passion. In fact, I suspect that if you’re doing something you love, you are more likely to succeed.

Stickies and Gratitude

The other day, I read that most people experience a large amount of insecurity in their early twenties. Mind you, it was just one of many tidbits on a rather unscholarly ‘advice’ website for the college set, but it immediately made sense to me. After all, the first few years of your third decade are when you are supposed to start figuring it all out. You should, according to general wisdom, be landing your first job, first apartment, first mortgage - and so it goes. But for many of us, this means navigating a world that our run-of-the-mill post-secondary education never really prepared us for, leaving us unsure as to whether or not we are on the right path. Worse yet, insecurity tends to breed more insecurity. You start out with something along the lines of “No-one wants to give me a job!” and before you know it, you’re on a feel-sorry-for-yourself-spiral, starting with the aforementioned lack of a job and all the way down onto ‘I have no money, no friends, no life, nothing.”

When you’re a limbo dweller, it’s par for the course to feel you have little to offer, and I think that it’s pretty much a given that at some point or another you will feel this way. Acknowledging our dissatisfaction with our lives is vital to changing the things that make us so dissatisfied in the first place. But equally important, however, is to recognize what you still have in your life. I mean, let’s be painfully honest with ourselves. You know that it is a ridiculous, arrogant thing to say that you have nothing. If you’re reading this, you have access to the internet, presumably your own computer - and more likely than not you’re not worrying about where your next meal is going to come from. And despite what your insecurities are telling you, you know that you do still have friends in your life. You (may) have family in your life. You have some sort of higher education, a privilege which I am extremely embarrassed to admit I thought was more common than it actually is. You have a lot of good, no, great things going for you, even if they aren’t the particular goals that you want to end up with. You are extremely, extremely lucky when compared to the vast majority of people who live on this planet. Your life, quite frankly, is pretty  amazing. You already have all the tools you need to be successful.

Don’t I sound just like your parents? You know, when they used to tell you that plenty of children didn’t have anything to eat so you’d better be grateful for your broccoli even though you had asked over and over again for mac and cheese? Ha! No, I’m not saying that you should be ashamed of yourself for feeling depressed about your life. I completely understand that when you’re in the midst of that insecurity spiral, it’s hard to remember those great things, or assign much value to them. However, I know that for me, dipping further and further down the insecurity spiral without focussing on the myriad of wonderful things in my life has led to many of my murkiest, darkest moments in limbo. What has helped me is saying, out loud, all of the things I am grateful for, even if I don’t quite believe myself at that moment in time. So, here’s a quick exercise that has helped me when I wasn’t feeling so great. Grab a pack of sticky notes, and start writing. Write down things as they occur to you, whether they be little things or big things, but write down everything that you are grateful for, and put them up on a place (or places) where you can see them often. And I can promise you this much; that no matter how upset you are with the way things have turned out for you, you’ll soon run out of places to put those stickies.

Shall I get us started? Here are a few of my own, in no particular order.

I have enough money to pay my own bills.
I have parents that encouraged me to save, rather than spend, allowing me to pay for the important things even when I was no longer working.
I have an extremely loving and supportive family that don’t let me get away with not keeping in touch!
I have three of the most wonderful best friends anyone could ask for.
I am a university educated young woman in a stable country where I can practice the religion of my choice, vote for the candidate of my choice and marry whom I please.
I have lots and lots of shoes. (I said the little things as well!)
I can walk to a local farmer’s market to buy organic vegetables.

And so on! This can go on forever - but isn’t that the point?

P.S. Yeah, my privilege is showing. So think of a great side-effect of this exercise as helping you to realize all the numerous ways in which sheer luck, not how wonderfully special and precious you intrinsically are(n’t), has contributed to the circumstances of your life. It certainly makes me think about our society’s current ‘meritocracy’. But that’s another post entirely.

Procrastinators Anonymous

I’m a procrastinator. There, I said it. If I can put it off, I will. If I can delay it, so much the better. I’ve tried to rationalize that I work better under pressure, but I really don’t. The few times I’ve managed to get a head start on things, I’m always happier for it. Of course, sometimes I play this trick on myself where I start something really early (say an article for instances), and having soothed my anxiety and convinced myself that I’ve made a good start of it, I let it sit until the last minute and end up scrambling to finish it anyway. It’s a bloody cycle.

I was never exactly a bad student, but I wasn’t an overachiever either. I turned in my assignments on time (mostly) but I only did exactly what was expected of me and no more. I wasn’t big on studying before tests, relying on my (not-so-great) memory and a bit of luck to carry me through, and usually it did. I didn’t see a problem and pretty much sailed through high school like that, until I got to university. Still, besides a few all-nighters and slapping myself for my own stupidity (“I can’t believe I’m doing this to myself AGAIN!”), I managed to graduate with pretty good grades. Look at that, I thought to myself, I can get away with a little slacking off after all. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was a bad habit, but I figured in time I would miraculously become mature and responsible. But my irregular study habits and just-enough-to-get-by work ethic bit me in the butt long after I thought it would ever matter again.

The thing about procrastination is that it doesn’t just screw me up in the classroom; it gets me in the workplace too and even in my personal life. The same personality glitch that has me delaying projects at the office, prompts me to put off a confrontation with a friend. Turns out that good study-habits translate into good self-discipline... and vice versa.

The first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem, right? But I need to go further and identify why I procrastinate. We all procrastinate for different reasons and for me it’s largely a fear of failure. While it’s true that it doesn’t hurt to try, it definitely hurts to fail. I go to great lengths to ensure that I don’t fail and procrastinating isn’t my only coping mechanism. Another thing I do is avoid competition like the Plague. If my best friend is taking violin lessons, I’m doing piano; that way no matter how good she gets at it I won’t ever have to compare myself to her. When doing a presentation, I make sure to go first so that the audience doesn’t have a chance to compare me to all the other presentations that follow.

The fear of failure is a powerful thing, something I’m still struggling to overcome. But in the meantime, how do I make sure that my bad habit doesn’t drag me down? Here are some helpful tips that have been suggested to me by wise friends and family members - tips that I have been trying to put into practice:

1) Make a list. I love lists: so neat, so precise, so graceful! You can tack your To Do list on your wall where you’ll see it every day. Write in big letters, decorate it if it helps. I promise you’ll feel like Christmas morning when you get to cross things off your list.

2) Take frequent breathers. Now this one is a tricky one, because the procrastinator in me gets easily distracted. This is a good exercise in self-discipline (you may need a timer with a big obnoxious bell for this one). For example: if you’re working on a project, work for an hour, stop and take a 15 minute break (to use the bathroom, grab a snack, do a quick yoga pose), then go back to work for another hour and repeat the process.

3) Take deep, rib-cracking breaths. This may or may not work for you, but when I start to feel overwhelmed by a task, I find that breathing in as far as I can go and holding it there for a bit before breathing out really helps relieve the panicky feeling I get. A quick walk around the block is also good.

4) Identifying your trigger. This one was suggested to me by the wise and lovely Miss D. Sometimes all it takes is figuring out why you procrastinate. Once I figured out that my procrastination was caused by a fear of failure, I had to remind myself that I don’t always fail. There are successes in my past, accomplishments I’m proud of, but sometimes I forget them. I also had to remind myself that I’ve failed before and it wasn’t the end of the world. Sure it hurt a bit, but I got back up again and brushed myself off and I was a stronger person because of it. I am a stronger person because of it.

Don’t let procrastination hold you back. It’s a bad habit, but it’s a habit that can be broken with some practice and a bit of determination, and since you and I are living in limbo, we have plenty of time to do it!

PS: If you have any other suggestions about how to overcome procrastination, please post it in the comments. I need all the help I can get!

Escaping the If Only's

Two days ago, I graduated again. I should be excited, but I don’t really feel anything more than general satisfaction. My mind, you see, is too filled with ‘If onlys’ to be excited. If only I’d studied harder in my first degree. If only I’d done a different degree. If only I’d gone back to school sooner. If only I’d been more proactive about my job search.

I’m sure many of you have experienced a raging case of the ‘if only’s’. They are those pernicious thoughts about where you would be if only things had happened differently. And while it’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world to be aware of how life could have turned out differently for you, quite a few of us limbo dwellers find that that alternate ‘if only’ life is all we can think about. We find ourselves consumed with bright, shiny images of that successful, fulfilling other life. And inevitably, those images cast a long shadow over the life we are actually leading. We cannot help but view our actual life as worse on every count, even if we still have many wonderful things in it. Worst of all, focusing only on our ‘if only’ alternate life can make us feel as if we have nothing to look forward to. I’m willing to bet that many of you will agree with me that it often seems as if there’s no point in trying to get out of limbo, because our chance for a better future has already passed us by. But has it?

No, it hasn’t. In theory, we all know this. In practice? Clearing your mind of the if only’s is much harder, as even success in life can trigger thoughts of how you could have done even better. Here are a few of the things that have (and haven’t!) helped me. How do you deal with them? Comment away and let us know!

1. Outright avoidance. One of the first things I did was to simply stop thinking about what I could have done. I’m not talking about ‘overcoming’ them, or any of that nonsense. Instead, I went into denial that things could have turned out differently. I pretended that I didn’t really care about the fact that I could have been furthering my studies instead of sitting around at home and half-heartedly looking for a job. While this made me feel better about my current situation, it didn’t help me address what had got me into that situation in the first place. And underneath my denial I knew the truth - that I could have been doing something better.

2. Giving in. The problem with avoidance is that often the if only’s come back in full force at the slightest opportunity! As soon as you begin to acknowledge that you could have done something else, you can’t help but think what else you’ve missed out on! Why didn’t you listen your parents and apply for that internship? Why didn’t you ignore your parents and study what you really wanted to study? Before too long, you find yourself practically paralyzed with all the various possibilities you once had, and now think are gone forever. I felt a bit better that I was acknowledging my circumstances, but even worse once I took a long, hard look at my life.

3. Downplay the if only’s. After giving in to the fact that yes, if I had done things differently, my life would look very different, I began to come up with reasons as to why such an alternate life wouldn’t have been so great after all. I would have been too young to start such an intense program! I definitely would have failed at it. Oh, I would have been stuck in a job that I hated! That alternate life would actually have been worse than the one I have now! It’s much better that things turned out the way they did.

Look - this may be true. It may be the case that the life you would have led would have been worse than the one you are leading now. However, it’s not certain that this is so! Pretending that your life is going better than any other possible way is just as bad as outright avoidance. At some point, your rational brain is going to kick in and say ‘Hey! You know, it probably would have been easier if I’d got that well-paying job’ and then you may very well find your illusion crumbling around you. So what do you do?

4. All of the above. No, really. I’ve learnt that for me, a few if only’s aren’t so bad after all. They help to remind me that I don’t have to be satisfied with living in limbo if it’s not fulfilling for me. I could have done differently - so why don’t I try? I don’t think about them all the time, but to a certain extent they’re still there. It’s good to remember that your decisions, however small, can have a lasting effect on your life. Depending on what you’ve done, your life could have been easier or harder than it is. It took me a while, but eventually I recognized that this is perfectly okay. However, the really important thing is to focus on the life you have now. What will make your future the best one possible? Use your only ifs to remind you of how much potential your life has. In fact, I prefer to translate them into ‘what ifs’. What if I decided to volunteer for a bit? What would what future look like? What if I applied for that job after all? You can get excited about these what ifs, because they don’t belong to a life that has passed you by. They’re part of a future that just has yet to come.

Waiting For Lightning to Strike

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have things figured out yet. I don’t have a five year plan - I don’t even have a one year plan. When I graduated from university in 2009 I had a vague idea that I wanted to eventually pursue a graduate degree, but I was mostly relieved that I had managed to graduate at all. I rode that high for a few months, as I job hunted and caught up on my favourite TV shows and summer reading, waiting for a flash of inspiration to hit me. Any day now, I thought, a decision is going to descend from the heavens and alight on me like a divine truth, and I will know with absolute certainty and perfect clarity what I am meant to be doing.

A few more months passed and still no job. Sending out job applications started to feel like launching rocket ships into a black hole. Silence was the only answer I got back.. Am I the only one who hates this new system of online applications?

So I stopped sending them. I started to imagine myself at thirty, still unemployed, still living with my parents, my university diploma gathering dust in the bookshelf like a failed experiment. I started sleeping in later and watching more TV. I stopped talking to my friends because I could no longer answer the dreaded question, “So what are you up to these days?”

Just as I started to sink into a gooey mire of lethargy and depression, my mom (God bless her) suggested that if I couldn’t find a job, I should try doing some volunteer work. Well, I groaned and grumbled about how it should come to this, but I had to admit that it was better than staying home. So I started to volunteer with a local aid agency and for the first few months I was basically stuffing envelopes and picking up the mail. So much for my expensive education, I thought.

Then something horrible happened. On an island in the Caribbean a devastating earthquake claimed thousands of lives and aid agencies rushed to the scene to minister to the suffering populace. Suddenly I was on a plane to Haiti, sent by my organization to support a team offering vital services on the ground. If it didn’t sound so macabre, I would say I was in the right place at the right time. Not only did I meet some amazing people, but in witnessing the resilience of the survivors of that disaster helped me put my own situation into perspective.

Truth be told, a year later, I still don’t have things completely figured out. I’m still waiting to be struck by a cosmic bolt of inspirational lightning. But in the meantime I’m doing things I love: I’ve joined a choir, taken up a martial art, started crocheting again (I’ve only made scarves so far and one misshapen hat, but it was fun!), and I’ve even found a part-time job to tie me over. I’ve learned that life isn’t going to stand still while I figure things out (and Thank God it doesn’t!), so I’ve decided to just get on with the living of it.

Facebook Rules for Limbo Denizens

If you’re anything like me, there’s a Question that you never want to hear again and yet almost everyone you meet can’t seem to resist asking at every opportunity. You know the one.

“So....what are you doing these days?”

You hate it because you have to mumble something along the lines of “Oh, you know, just keeping busy.” It translates roughly to working at a dead-end job or worse, nothing and living off your parents, and you can see the look of pity in their eyes as they say “Ohh, right, it’s good to stay busy” and change the topic. Inevitably, whatever they are doing is much, much cooler than whatever it is that you do to pass the time, and you leave the meeting more dissatisfied with your life than ever.

Some well-intentioned people would have you believe that Facebook is the answer to this. You can stay in touch with your friends AND avoid the Question. They’re wrong. Facebook is worse. Why? Because with a certain amount of pride-swallowing, you can learn to deal with the Question (we’ll talk more about that later). But what is harder to take is what seems like an endless stream of friends and acquaintances whose lives are spectacularly better than yours. I can guarantee that as soon as you find yourself staring into the face of limbo, 99.9% of your Facebook friends will be in better school programs than you are, in better relationships, and better jobs. There is copious evidence to support this, from pictures (Dee’s Paris Adventure!) to status updates (Mike Laney is so psyched for med school!) and the automatic info updates that populate your news feed (Darren is now in a relationship).

So, what is a Limbo Denizen to do? Everytime a new tidbit pops up on your newsfeed, you are reminded of how great everyone else’s life is. How are you supposed to maintain your friendships when you don’t want to hear about everyone else’s good fortune? Here are a few rules for dealing with Facebook when you feel as if you don’t have anything good going on in your own life.

1. Don’t go on Facebook. No, really. If there is no way for you go on facebook without seeing everyone else’s happy, smiling faces, and you just can’t stand them, then don’t. You don’t really need to be on Facebook, especially if you can stay in touch with your friends via text, phone, and email. At the very least, seriously consider cutting down how much time you spend on there.

2. Hide certain people from your newsfeed. No matter what it seems, not everyone on your friends list will be constantly broadcasting how wonderful their lives are. Click on the little x beside a self-promoter’s status to hide it from your feed, and no longer will you feel as if their life is being held up to yours for constant comparison. And you can still stay in touch with them via chat and private messages - you just won’t see what they are doing at all times!

3. Defriend some people. This goes one step further than the previous suggestion. If you have Facebook friends who you wouldn’t talk to in real life, and haven’t talked to in more than a year, why should their status updates clutter your newsfeed? Do you really need to know what they’re doing? You don’t. Cut ‘em loose.

4. Realize that no-one’s life is as great as they portray it to be on Facebook. For example, while I was living off of my last tax refund without school or job in sight, my page could have been filled with pictures of me and friends at a theme park (the one time I went), status updates about how I was loving my time off, and an info page filled with my affiliation with University of X, cool past employment, and newsfeed updates about how ‘Miss D. is no longer listed as single’ simply because I had taken the information off of my profile. To an outsider, my sunny smile conveyed nothing except that I was extremely happy. I wasn’t. Similarly, your friends’ lives are not as perfect as you think they are.

5. Start cultivating hobbies. Take a class in something artsy, join a sports team at a local community center, and start volunteering. Soon, you will find that you too have cool pictures to post and interesting status updates to share. Better yet, you’ll feel happier about yourself.

6. Realize that what other people are doing is nowhere near as important as what you are doing. This is long-term, and not easily done for everyone. It’s hard to get past the rosy image that everyone projects, and takes significant will-power to not compare yourself to other people when you are already feeling insecure about yourself due to your time in limbo. But even a small effort helps, and when you combine this with the other five rules, Facebook might not be quite such a drain on your confidence.

Welcome to Limbo

Don’t you wish you could meet your future self and find out how it all turns out?

For years, your life was laid out in front of you. You went to elementary school, high school, then some sort of post-secondary education. And then....you graduated.

What now?

Perhaps you had a plan, only to have it derailed because you didn’t achieve what you thought you would. Or it turns out that perfect plan wasn’t so perfect a fit for you after all. Life can throw you for a loop no matter how hard (or how hard you don’t) work, and many recent graduates suddenly find themselves adrift in a world where everyone else seems to have it together. How do you cope? How do you pick up the pieces of your once bright and shiny dreams and build anew? Some of you may already have a vague idea of what you want to do, but no clue as to how to get there. Still others struggle with forming a concrete picture of what our lives could look like. But for all of us, we have one thing in common; that the immediate future is a gaping hole that we somehow have to bridge in order to cross over to the successful life we just know is waiting for us on the other side. Worst of all? There’s no-one to build that bridge but us.

Since you can’t meet that future version of yourself, we thought it’d be nice to have the next best thing: a guide to living your life as you navigate that in-between stage and try to move on to bigger and better things. There will be posts on dealing with those rejection letters, keeping friendships alive when everyone you know seems to be moving on without you, and how to feel like a (semi-) independent adult when you live at home with your parents. Of course, there will more than a few emotional outpourings along the way, definitely on our parts, and maybe on yours. But that’s the point. There are many of us who are, or have been in limbo, and when you can’t see a way out of it, it’s often comforting to know that there are others there with you. We’re still figuring it out, and while we don’t have all the answers, let’s share how we feel and learn from each other. Then, we think, limbo won’t be so bad.