A few words on being stuck

It’s been a while since I posted anything about beer. Well, this post is not going to break that streak. All I can say about beer today is that if you have been ill, don’t think you can jump back on the party bus right away.

Oh, beer, darling friend of old. Why must you turn against me now when I most need you? In times past you brought me to a mellow state of being. You loosened my tongue, allowing me to discourse at length to perfect strangers about the origin of your hops. Now you just wring every drop of moisture out of my poor, infected respiratory system and make me cough like an eighty year old smoker.

But why, you may ask, do I especially need beer now? It is because I am confronting the question that every recent college graduate must eventually answer: what am I doing with my life?

I graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 2010. My plan was to take some time off and recover from my incredibly stressful senior year and then apply to grad school. I thought I would get my masters, take another short break and then head on to the PhD. At first I followed this plan. I worked all summer and fall at a mind-numbing but restful job and made some money. Over the winter I applied for the M.A. in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies program at the University of York and was accepted. While an undergraduate I had lived for eleven months in London and had felt at home there; returning to England for graduate school seemed a natural fit.

But mid-visa application, I was struck by doubts. Why was I going to grad school? Was it because I wanted to be a professor? Or was it because I couldn’t think of anything else to do? I missed my British friends, but was that a good enough reason to commit myself to an academic program and its inevitable accompaniment, debt?

The answer was no. I withdrew my application.

Since then I have been floundering. In the words of a recent interviewer, I have been applying myself “to all kinds of different activities ad hoc.” I interned at a theatre for a while, tried to run a half-marathon for the AIDS Foundation (emphasis on ‘tried’), started this blog and most recently, attempted to start my career in the internet marketing field. Nothing has brought me the satisfaction I crave—though The Beer n’ Book Place has come closest of all.

While I was in school, I was one of the best. I worked extremely hard and was rewarded for my hard work with good grades and praise. Now I’m stuck.

I’m lost. And I have a cold. All I can do is put these words down on a computer screen and hope that somewhere out in the vastness of the Internet, someone reads them and thinks, “I know exactly how that feels.”