![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Me right now, at 23
Aug. 10th, 2017 11:40 pmI dunno, I've been thinking about being 23 and my age lately. Old enough to feel older and like I'm trying to adjust to being an "adult", working, not being in school any more. Getting on the cusp of my mid-twenties (I'll be turning 24 soon, in a few more months), but still hanging on to the young-adult title, racing towards the rest of my life as I head towards my thirties. No longer a child! Exactly, anyway. I'm not in college any more, at least.
I got a bit of a cool extension of being a student and having a young social group by going to a coding school after college. That was pretty neat and I enjoyed it, especially because I got to socialize with other people than just the small women's college I attended. Including guys! Wow. All my life, struggling to interact with guys past middle school, it's nice to have some guy friends once again.
Anyway, I struggle a lot to define what I want the rest of my life to be like. But that's a topic for another time, I guess, if not for my morbid journalling.
Feels nice to be 23 as well because I can sometimes be nostalgic about a decade past, when I was 13, and what the web was like then and who I was as a child. And to know how I ended up a decade later, surprisingly lucky and doing well enough, despite my daily travails. Surprisingly!! Because, although I always thought myself intelligent and something who ought to achieve status as an adult (like being a doctor, a lawyer, etc. or having an article in Wikipedia), in college it looked like things were relatively undefined and that I'd be settling out for a more uncertain, average life experience. It's not like I was pursuing science or was able to major in something lucrative, or that I'd been able to do prestigious or helpful internships. Nah, we struggled more than that. (Me plus my sidekick twin, who's pretty similar to me.) Another topic.
I wonder if I'm redefining my adult identity and growing more comfortable with it. It probably depends on a myriad of things, and goes through some fluctuations. In college, despite being depressed and anxious, I always felt secure that I retained a core of identity that helped me cope with everything else. I think that eroded over time, though, maybe after I studied abroad and returned as a junior--like I lost my roots in the past, a decent part of my core, by growing more distance from them and my past self. And then as an adult, it felt vague and hard again, at times. About how people view me, about who I was as a person (interacting with others, for example) and what I liked about myself, about what I wanted in life...
What's probably helping at the moment is just ice skating, growing a thicker skin to politics and what people think of me, and maybe my enjoyment of simple coding at work. And that the social situation at work is slightly improved at the moment, maybe. I really like ice skating, by the way! Ice skating helps me feel like there's something I enjoy, something that's worthwhile, aside from everything else in life, including whether or not I'll ever date and meet / end up with someone.
Anyway, I'm supposed to be coding at the moment. I just meant to find something to simultaneously procrastinate on, because it's late at night and I was feeling grudging about coding after work late in the day. For work, because I'm under some grind to finish some work stuff. You know, for work, which somehow makes me feel a little self-important. That aside, this is fun, but I probably shouldn't write too much more. It's already later at night now (close to midnight), and I might have to stay up if I don't give up (on coding).
I haven't quite figured out how I want to keep my narrative style for thislivejournaldreamwidth stuff, like more like narrating a story or not. I guess I will figure that out with time since I'm not too uptight about it at the moment. I just wanted somewhere I could write anonymously about the details of my life that would be relatively obscure and unlikely to be traced back to me. Obviously, there's a plethora of recognizable personal details in my writing so it'd be easy to identify me if you really wanted to, but I'm counting on no one really wanting to or no one I know coming across this. You know, I just want to write about my thoughts and perceptions about people I know, where I work, etc, in a casual manner but not necessarily just to myself. It's hard to find another outlet for doing that, but this seems nice and workable for that purpose.
Anyway, I'm (supposed to be) coding, and probably messing around on Neopets a bit, and might be giving up soon to head to bed to be pragmatic--we'll see. That's me at 23.
I got a bit of a cool extension of being a student and having a young social group by going to a coding school after college. That was pretty neat and I enjoyed it, especially because I got to socialize with other people than just the small women's college I attended. Including guys! Wow. All my life, struggling to interact with guys past middle school, it's nice to have some guy friends once again.
Anyway, I struggle a lot to define what I want the rest of my life to be like. But that's a topic for another time, I guess, if not for my morbid journalling.
Feels nice to be 23 as well because I can sometimes be nostalgic about a decade past, when I was 13, and what the web was like then and who I was as a child. And to know how I ended up a decade later, surprisingly lucky and doing well enough, despite my daily travails. Surprisingly!! Because, although I always thought myself intelligent and something who ought to achieve status as an adult (like being a doctor, a lawyer, etc. or having an article in Wikipedia), in college it looked like things were relatively undefined and that I'd be settling out for a more uncertain, average life experience. It's not like I was pursuing science or was able to major in something lucrative, or that I'd been able to do prestigious or helpful internships. Nah, we struggled more than that. (Me plus my sidekick twin, who's pretty similar to me.) Another topic.
I wonder if I'm redefining my adult identity and growing more comfortable with it. It probably depends on a myriad of things, and goes through some fluctuations. In college, despite being depressed and anxious, I always felt secure that I retained a core of identity that helped me cope with everything else. I think that eroded over time, though, maybe after I studied abroad and returned as a junior--like I lost my roots in the past, a decent part of my core, by growing more distance from them and my past self. And then as an adult, it felt vague and hard again, at times. About how people view me, about who I was as a person (interacting with others, for example) and what I liked about myself, about what I wanted in life...
What's probably helping at the moment is just ice skating, growing a thicker skin to politics and what people think of me, and maybe my enjoyment of simple coding at work. And that the social situation at work is slightly improved at the moment, maybe. I really like ice skating, by the way! Ice skating helps me feel like there's something I enjoy, something that's worthwhile, aside from everything else in life, including whether or not I'll ever date and meet / end up with someone.
Anyway, I'm supposed to be coding at the moment. I just meant to find something to simultaneously procrastinate on, because it's late at night and I was feeling grudging about coding after work late in the day. For work, because I'm under some grind to finish some work stuff. You know, for work, which somehow makes me feel a little self-important. That aside, this is fun, but I probably shouldn't write too much more. It's already later at night now (close to midnight), and I might have to stay up if I don't give up (on coding).
I haven't quite figured out how I want to keep my narrative style for this
Anyway, I'm (supposed to be) coding, and probably messing around on Neopets a bit, and might be giving up soon to head to bed to be pragmatic--we'll see. That's me at 23.
