It’s a beautiful California Sunday, and I am inside,
three cups of coffee and no words into a film
critique. It’s written in my head – in fact, it has
been written for a week now, but getting it on paper
is just absolutely impossible.
Getting most things done has been a trial this week
for reasons I am not entirely sure of, but I think are
becoming clearer the more I procrastinate.
Last Sunday, I turned 22. The only thing to
differentiate it from any other birthday was that I
barely celebrated and I started hearing this little
nagging voice in the back of my head say “you should
be graduating in May” over and over, making me almost
entirely ineffective as a person with things to do. I
cannot do them – I am fixated on the fact that I am
not graduating yet.
It is totally ridiculous. If anything, I am doing
myself a disservice by not getting my school work
done, risking further setback by cleaning and sorting
old mail instead of sitting down at the computer and< just pounding out the pages.
And now, since my paper is going to be late, it has to
be good – it can’t be any old slapdash job that I
throw together the night before it’s due, because now
I’ve had extra time, perhaps even too much time,
because the paper has gotten far more complicated than
necessary in my mind. At this point I could write a
book or even a dissertation on these films, let alone
a paper. I could write enough papers for a whole
class…
…if I could just get any relevant thoughts out of my
head.
But I am not graduating in May, and it is troubling.
I don’t think this problem is about me, really. It is
about my high school classmates. I went to one of
those small schools where everyone goes to college and
several people go to schools like Yale and Stanford.
Those aren’t the people I’m worried about, though.
The people I am worried about are the ones who have
left college for careers and are being rather
successful.
I’ve come across three classmates in t.v. shows or
movies, and I know two others are writing for
television. One is a model, another is a professional
basketball player.
What am I doing? I’m going to school, which is not
glamorous, not (yet) profitable, and not really that
exciting.
I have already gone through this with a lot of these
people, too, which just compounds my inferiority
complex. These were kids with Prada prom dresses, who
got brand-new Explorers for their sixteenth birthdays.
They had huge parties and got to be in the audience
for the Oscars and the Grammys.
I wasn’t one of them then, and I’m not one now, but
being faced with them – their names in Dawson’s
credits, their picture in Interview – I feel like I’m
a whole lifetime behind. I’m 22. I don’t have a
career! I am not uber-fabulous. Alas.
