I am (not) a southern belle…yet.

So, I live in the South now. This shocking occurrence has provoked numerous comments about my personality and it’s relevance to southern living. Thank you all not very kindly.

This heavily sarcastic post keeps with the theme of “next-stepping” because frankly, this is my next step. And due to my spontaneous deep-dive into Georgian culture, I’ve discovered a few things about our great nation below the Yankee border.

I will now serve as a spy for the united Northern front and pass along some very valuable information about our southern compadres.

1. The word “y’all” generally means the same thing as “you guys.” For example, my two southern belle neighbors tend to insert this into most sentences at least two times. I.e. “Y’all should come over for drinks because y’all haven’t seen our new couch yet, and we think y’all would like it,” or “Hey y’all, I think we’ll meet our future husbands tonight at this bar. Y’all’ll love it!”

Sometimes I have to hold back my laughter when this occurs, and sometimes I just laugh. I also cannot stop saying “hey, you guys,” and I found myself saying “wicked” the other day. That’s just gross.

2. Grits are gross. Seriously. They resemble the mistake that occurs when you make cream of wheat with too much water. These people gulp them down like they’re delicious hash browns. During a recent late night (early morning, technically) eating session, I almost cried when my omelette came with grits instead of hash browns. Thankfully, my fellow northern friend hooked it up with some delicious normal potatoes off his own platter.

3. 50 degrees is “cold.” I’ve seen people here walking around bundled in scarves and winter boots. It makes me feel weird that I still wear flip flops and t-shirts because this feels like California to me.

4. Jesus saves, or at least that’s what the signs say.

5. The Georgia flag oddly resembles the Confederate flag. By oddly I mean not oddly at all.

6. People think Atlanta is a big city. It’s really just a sprawling suburb with buildings interspersed. Hot spots tend to fall close to or within a shopping center.

7. Every major road has a Waffle House on it. This is by no uncertain terms the dirtiest and best drunk food, ever. Soberly, you should never enter these golden arches.

8. Each apartment complex could possess a pool, gym, roofdeck, veg garden, dog walk, car wash, gated entrance, granite countertops, balconies, etc. The standard of living here is higher and cheaper than anywhere I’ve ever lived. Apartment managers will apologize for not providing free internet or free massages. In New York City, they wouldn’t apologize if there was not room to stand up.

9. Capitalism rules. There is, like, every store in America concentrated into the city of Atlanta. Within a five mile radius of your apartment.

10. People are really, really nice. They keep calling me m’am, which makes me uncomfortable. I’m used to maintaining a stand-offish air of snobbery. I don’t think this works here. I’m only half-kidding.

On another note, I think I’ve never really found a place where I can be so much myself. So, I dig it.

By the sea shore, or wherever you can find it.

When I was a senior in high school, I submitted a short piece to Image Explosion (Merion’s literature magazine) that told a story of a girl sneaking out of her house every night to sit on the beach. This was the time she thought the most clearly and the time when, perhaps, the skies and the surf told her what to do next.

I think the story was published and I think at the time I thought I created a character out of the blue, who bore no resemblance to me or you. Her intrinsic character traits were missing in the details and the setting was undeveloped, but the one thing that remained prominent throughout the story line was the ocean.

And tonight, while I was sitting on the floor of my nearly empty room wondering how the hell I was going to pick up and manage driving for 14 hours, I realized that in times of concentrated thought we often reach out mentally to the places we find solace.

In my Image story, I tried to convey that the ocean was a place for the girl to find her heart. The smell of saltwater and crisp air may not be portable things, but they are tangible memories (does that make sense?) that can accompany a person almost anywhere.

Wherever that girl found herself as life moved her in directions unknown, she could run to a beach and feel home.

Heartstrings really exist. By really I mean probably not, and by probably I mean definitely, but I’m a firm believer in tying emotions and mental health to physical feelings.

I may not have grown up on the shore, but the ocean has always had the effect of making my troubles quite literally sail away. Sometimes I think we all carry a personalized version of Pandora’s box, poised to open it when we feel most afraid. The ocean can swallow up the bad and remind you that you’re a single person in a world where most everyone feels.

If that didn’t make sense, here’s a quote from one of my favorite childhood novels “Walk Two Moons,” by Sharon Creech.

That night I kept thinking about Pandora’s box. I wondered why someone would put a good thing such as Hope in a box with sickness and kidnapping and murder. It was fortunate that it was there, though. If not, people would have the birds of sadness nesting in their hair all the time, because of nuclear wars and the greenhouse effect and bombs and stabbings and lunatics. There must have been another box with all the good things in it, like sunshine and love and trees and all that. Who had the good fortune to open that one, and was there one bad thing down there in the bottom of the good box? Maybe it was Worry. Even when everything seems fine and good, I worry that something will go wrong and change everything.

Even in the face of utmost optimism, it’s easy to cling to worry. Worry is often a fair weather friend, coming to muss up everything when we need it the least. That’s been my problem as of late.

For kids in our generation, it’s essential to be able to carry a piece of home on life’s journey. Sometimes, though, we lose that piece in a box filled with regret, doubt, disillusion and false expectations. Only the lucky ones have figured out how to carry their heart in a box of good.

From adventures abroad to new cities to the next step in general in a world that’s moving faster than we can keep up, it’s necessary to have a place to put your feet, both mentally and physically.

As life becomes something we create rather than something we settle for, I guess we must all find ways to incorporate a place for peace into the daily grind called “normalcy.”

When you find a way to call a place yours, like my girl-character and her ocean, and carry it with you over the course of your sometimes complicated life, you have probably succeeded in finding peace.

And when you find that, you can find a way to carry another’s heart in your box, too.

The pursuit of it all, or something like that.

Last night I had dinner with an old and close friend, someone who has shared with me many of the same and many of the similar experiences that shape a general attitude on life.

And because of the way we often relate, the topic of the future came up.

She’s staying here and I am going there. She is trying to decide between going to school and applying for jobs and I have already set my path. In the space between these differences, however, lives uncertainty.

I tried to tell her that it’s easiest to cut losses and make a decision. Decision brings purpose, purpose brings goals, and goals imply that you are a legitimate person with a reasonable life strategy. Attribute a fancy job title, school affiliation or 5-year plan to your name and all of a sudden, you achieve “status.”

Then I tried to make myself believe that. I realized that I really have no idea what the next year or two will bring.

By cutting my losses, am I cutting myself off from the “other” person I could be?

I hate to think “what if,” which is why I’ve become a firm believer in going on the feeling, whether it’s in life, career, and most of all, love.

We sipped on her father’s homemade wine and took solace in the fact that because nothing had yet begun for either of us, we could still live like we had infinite choices.

But perhaps because of how my life has been shaped over the course of the past year and 5 months, I have started to develop the stubborn outlook that life is indeed all too finite.

A recent post on the New York Times’ “Happy Days” blog refers to this feeling of having to look back and wonder what it would be like if you had chosen a different path. Though the writer attributes this phenom, which he calls the “Referendum,” more to a middle-aged sect, he acknowledges the beginnings are in your 20s.

Young adulthood is an anomalous time in people’s lives; they’re as unlike themselves as they’re ever going to be, experimenting with substances and sex, ideology and religion, trying on different identities before their personalities immutably set. Some people flirt briefly with being freethinking bohemians before becoming their parents. Friends who seemed pretty much indistinguishable from you in your 20s make different choices about family or career, and after a decade or two these initial differences yield such radically divergent trajectories that when you get together again you can only regard each other’s lives with bemused incomprehension.

I’ve blogged about similar feelings before. Whether it’s the choice to go to school, live at home, choose a career, strap on a backpack, date someone new or simply grow up, the 20-something world is scary and uncertain. How are we supposed to act when the rules of propriety differ for everyone?

I am about to embark on a small adventure that could permanently alter my life. What if I had chosen to stay in Philadelphia and work? What if I had moved to New York City? What if I am ignoring a sign that I should be pushing to the forefront?

Though I have become more cynical as life has thrown its share of curveballs, I still believe in fate and attributing significance to coincidence. Not all the time, but most of it.

Should I have settled for something different? Should I be in a committed relationship or should I have been in one in college? Much to the chagrin of some family members and family friends, perhaps. That’s just never been me.

All of us have lain awake at night wondering “what if.” Where does that wondering stop and when does true satisfaction set in?

Sidenote: This feeling is explored in depth throughout the movie “500 Days of Summer,” which is an awesome movie. And it was a huge hit at Sundance 2009. I’ll include the trailer, just because I probably need to insert some interaction into this post to keep you from snoring off.

I don’t mean to make it seem as if my life is unrewarding, because I have shared in countless occasions, events and daily experiences that have made me wish that not only my choices but I too were infinite.

Simply, the end of traditional education brings the impending notion that time does exist and it moves faster than youth. I sometimes still feel like I am blowing out the candles on my 16th birthday cake in the basement of my house, surrounded by 20 of my Merion friends.

I think the Referendum can be applied to any age, in fact.

Yes: the Referendum gets unattractively self-righteous and judgmental. Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong. So it’s easy to overlook that hidden beneath all this smug certainty is a poignant insecurity, and the naked 3 A.M. terror of regret.

The problem is, we only get one chance at this, with no do-overs. Life is, in effect, a non-repeatable experiment with no control.

As we all embark on this journey together, I think it’s okay to look at the person next to you and wonder if you too could be like him or her. But then look at your own life and realize how powerful you are when it comes to making the choice to be not only good, but awesomely infinite, in the figurative sense.

I’m poised for a rebound.

Due to some snarky comments from the 5 or so people who actually read this, I feel inclined to say that I’ll be back soon.

The unabridged version of Asher Roth’s reflection.

If I see one more Facebook status that reads “moving into the beach!” or “first day of classes ,” I’ll probably start crying. Actually, I already whimpered today when I signed into Facebook, so this would be a full-fledged sob for the loss of my youth and coolness.

When I graduated from high school, I rarely got the nostalgic pangs that I feel now.

After four years of an intense college-prep experience with solely females, pinned blazers, intense assemblies on the dangers and evil-ness of sex and street drugs, and “demerits” for rolled skirts and sloppy shirts, I was ready to move on.

Besides, the only drug present at my high school was, at the very worst, pot. And there was an uproar after one self-righteous (male) speaker told us that it was “the women’s fault for arousing men, because girls wear sweatpants with the word ‘juicy’ on the butt. And they walk with a strut.”

Get real.

College, even a small, private one, was an all-around enriching experience. I especially the miss the thrill of pulling up to campus after a long summer, ready to pack a year’s worth of memories into a small dorm room with the people you grew extremely fond of over the course of your educational experience.

Plus, there were certain things you could get away with in college that are simply unacceptable in the awkward, post-college social dynamic.

For example:

1. You could wear sweatpants on the regular. I know, some people disagree with this and say either a. sweatpants are hideous or b. you can wear sweatpants whenever you want, wherever you want. But I think you’d be hard pressed to find a successful human being rolling into his or her office in sweatpants and a shirt that reads “Fairfield Athletics” or “College.”

2. You could fully reap the benefits of student deals, like lower priced tickets, food, manicures, etc.

Come to think of it, I still do this. But I can only be a poser for so long before someone calls me out, or at least until I get my new (graduate) school id. There’s a certain level of respect and admiration attributed to a school id. Whenever one accompanies a purchase, the store clerk always seems to smile a little wider as they knock $10 off the price tag.

3. Backpacks were a fashionable accessory. I looked at my red Northface sitting on my closet shelf today, and I wanted to say “Hey, you! You look great, but I have no highlighters and new notebooks to fill you with…I’m sorry for your loss.”

Now, if a young 20-something walks around with a backpack outside the limits of a campus, passerby’s look for a bookstore or a public mode of a transportation nearby. And you can’t really retort “I’m just trying to carry my things,” because that’s what messanger bags and chic purses were invented for. Time to grow up.

4. You could blame just about anything on the party dynamics from the night before. Regretful words, outlandish statements, crazy dance moves only seen on ABDC (great show), singing Asher Roth’s “College” obnoxiously loud – chalk it up to the college party, and you’re good to go for the impending evening.

5. Conversations about “freshman year!” and complaints about the difficulty of core classes were acceptable and welcome. Now, if I reference freshman year, others must think “that was four years ago.” It’s depressing, and I’m sure the other participants in this sad conversation want to say “get over it, creep.”

Classes used to be a good way to define yourself. Business kids talked about accounting, liberal arts kids talked about weird things like upper-level religion and politics courses. Now, you have to result to the topic of recently-read books and pop-culture. This requires one to actually buy books or consume pop-culture, and there are many more chances to offend someone or have them miss your nuanced reference to a movie quote or current bestseller.

Sigh.

Actually, despite this rambling post, I miss college but I am excited to move on with life. I think. My friend and I discussed the other day (via our Blackberries, of course) how the real world is actually not real, and how we don’t understand why everyone talks about how “hard and rough” it is. In fact, I’ve seen more than one instance where people actually come to work and do not do one thing that constitutes as such.

Maybe the best is yet to come and I just have my head too stuck in the rocky sand at Fairfield Beach to notice.

And to anyone who complains about the “difficulty” of college classes or the pain of “moving all my ish onto the 4th floor,” get over it. You’ll crave those 60 minute lectures and dorm stairs when you are sitting awkwardly in front of a potential boss, trying to convince them that you are indeed the best for the job.

On Facebook.

Despite this “recession,” or whatever term television journalists at large have used to classify this horrific era of the class of 2009’s depression and lack of activity, Facebook has announced that they plan to increase their hiring by 50 percent this year.

Shit, man. How do I get a job at Facebook? Do applicants have to be even creepier than they already are? Increase their friend count? Status update all day? That wouldn’t be right.

An article from Global CIO says:

Facebook’s hiring spree runs counter to the experience of its social networking rival MySpace, which recently announced it would trim its international workforce by two-thirds and its US staff by 30%. And, a recent informal survey at an Enterprise 2.0 session found that participants were cutting back on their use of Facebook as well as MySpace.

However, Facebook’s user base continues to grow and its workforce has reached the 1,000 mark to keep up. Earlier this year, company executives said Facebook expected to grow 70% this year with revenues surpassing $500 million. Facebook generates revenue from advertising and other payments

Frankly, this makes sense. As more people are sitting around at home, indulging in daytime television and reading copious amounts of online news in order to seem informed, or trying to fill empty work hours, they also spend more time on Facebook.

It also makes sense that many are “cutting back” their MySpace usage because that whole phenomenon is just weird. MySpace should just take their cut, say their piece and become a Facebook app.

The creep factor has skyrocketed.

The original Facebook simply provided a platform for social connection. You had to be in college to use it, a rule I liked. You had a nice picture and not 1,003 pictures tagged at obscene hours of the evening or workday without you knowing. Status updates were non-existent.

Now, I can find out what you said to your ex-roommate via wall-to-wall, I can see where you were last weekend via your status updates and “recently tagged pics,” I can find out your email, workplace, current city, group affiliations, favorite news articles, what you’re trying to sell, what you blog about, if you have a website, and your hopes, dreams and general outlook on life.

And thank goodness for that. Because Facebook has become the sole way to reconnect with your past, and by past I mean college.

While reading this post, you may scoff “Okay, how much time does this girl think I have on my hands? Who is she, even? I don’t sit around all day reading Facebook. I’ve never even made a status update!”

Yeah, sure.

Count how many times you just “check your Facebook” in a week. Now, scroll your minifeed. Oh, looks like that person feels great about seeing her “girlies! xo” this weekend. Wow, those guys sure hate Barack Obama. School must be starting, because a lot of people are “packing” and “can’t believe how quick the summer went.”

The nursing boards must have happened nation-wide, because it seems like many RN’s just joined Facebook.

And what is that mini-phone thing next to an update? Tweeting, I mean Facebooking, from a mobile phone? It’s all about location.

Facebook even provides a “good friend” cushion.

Example: It’s your sophomore year suitemate’s birthday and you forgot. Everyone else wished him/her a “happy birthday, bro!” before you. Shame on you, but thank goodness- Zuckerberg publishes “the list.” You can save yourself with a craftily timed “inbox message,” which is “more personal” than a wall post.

Sidenote: I’m not hating on any of this. I am guilty of every Facebook action.

Now that Facebook has replaced AIM, Webshots (remember them?), sometimes email and often interpersonal contact, I fear that everyone may join Dwight Schrute’s game of “Second Life.” If you don’t watch “The Office” and the reference is lost on you, then start watching “The Office.”

These are the tools we’re given, though, and we use them for what they’re worth.

Some questions to ponder about this consistent conversation we all participate in.

1. Why and how does Facebook keep “suggesting” people and things to me? I understand the “50 friends in common” backstory, but I can’t quite figure out why a girl I met once doing a service-learning project keeps popping up as “someone I may know.” We have no friends in common and she is not in my “contact list,” if that even makes sense. I’ll even see random activities I might like pop up, groups I’d think about joining, etc.

Facebook is a person, and he is an acquaintance that sort-of “knows” me.

I sense a conspiracy.

2. Why isn’t there a “dislike” button, similar to the “like” thumbs-up symbol? I assume I speak for the majority when I say it would be much more fun to dislike 3, maybe 4 things a day on your minifeed. Maybe cause some “drama” in Schrute’s world.

3. Why do people keep inviting me to become a pirate, an eco-friendly farmer or a fan of an unknown band? Do you think we could create filters for the invites we receive? I don’t really want to find out the sex of my future child via a quiz made by a random college student or send you a faux, virtual gift on your birthday. If a person sends me a Facebook cake via my wall, I’ll just wonder why anyone would bother to send something that looks so delicious in virtual form. That’s just mean.

4. I think there should be an “awkward” filter-thing on friend requests. For example: You and person X are in class together. X sits behind you, but you and X do not speak. You see each other at the bar said evening. X yells “Yo! You sit in front of me in ____ class! Dude, I hate that class!” You respond “I know! Let’s do the project together!”

Flash forward to the Saturday morning Facebook friend request. X friends you, or you friend X. But, don’t you wish there was a filter that flagged this request as “Warning: This is a potentially awkward request that will have no significance to either of us after ____ class ends. In fact, I may or may not speak to you outside the four walls of the bar ever again. Post college – seeeeeya, but I’ll probably creep ya?”

Or, if a random person from college “friends” you after the fact of graduation, you could accept it but with a “return receipt” that says “yeah, we don’t speak, but I find virtual friendship perfectly acceptable. I may even shout-out your birthday, but not with a wallpost-cake, because that’s reserved for my real life friends.”

Also, moms have Facebook.

5. Facebook Chat just makes a person way, way too available.

I could go on, but I think I just out-geeked myself, which I thought was an impossible feat.

It’s okay to spend time on Facebook. Despite a few weird features, it helps friends from all over the world connect all the time and in a personal way. I would not talk to half the people I have met in life if I did not have an account.

When Match.com makes an app, that’s when things will start to go downhill. And that’s when I’ll most likely delete my account.

I have to say, though, that the King Creep (pictured) is a genius.

Celebrities, Happiness, and Post Grad

People stalk you on the street. You’re gorgeous, you’re well-dressed and you’re at the top of the it restaurant’s VIP list. Oh, and those Christian Louboutin pumps that are “waiting list only” at Barneys? You’re wearing them.

And no, you’re not a star of NYC Prep. In fact, you’d never deign to be on that show.

You’re a celebutante. You always have a job and your identity is handed to you. In fact, you live on Easy Street. I know this may or may not draw accusations of “everyone has their problems,” etc., but come on. This would be nice compared to living in your childhood room and scraping up money to enjoy a few nights out with friends.

Due to the boredom and stress of life post-college, I’ve started to think that I would be okay with being a famous person. And many people, both male and female (and don’t deny this, because it’s very, very true), would love to be a celebrity.

Celebrity status means a few great things, and by a few great things I mean unlimited money, unlimited access and unlimited good looks. Money and good fortune can’t always buy you happiness, but it can buy you a few things to keep you occupied in your quest for it.

I was going to use this post to discuss the growing ratio of misconstrued celebrity women (think: Kate Gosselin, Sarah Palin, Lindsay Lohan, Jennifer Aniston), but I gave that up when I realized my name isn’t Perez Hilton or Chelsea Handler.

Nor do I have a job, like Perez or Chelsea. And that’s really what this blog is about – an exploration of what it means to search for your identity when identity is no longer handed to you in the form of a school id and an emblem embroidered sweatshirt.

I always assumed that the next step would involve money, and then happiness. Many studies suggest that money can affect your happiness if you actually spend it on life experiences, which I wholeheartedly agree with. A writer from the blog Cranky Fitness, which I linked above, says the following:

I think the real debate should be about things we buy for status, versus things we buy for our own comfort or pleasure or adventure. An “experiential” dinner eaten at a Trendy Restaurant is, in my mind, a lousy bargain if you only went because it seemed like a sophisticated thing to do. But a great book or a new kitchen gadget or a comfy pair of running shoes can be a great happiness bargain, if using them gives you pleasure.

I agree.

I also think that happiness for our generation, though, comes from figuring out what’s next. Maybe it’s because I’ve heard the Dawson’s Creek theme song five times over the past two weeks (I kid you not. I’ve counted. And it’s been in coffee shops, a beauty salon and my car), but I really think that if you don’t know what your plan is, it’s hard to even maintain a happy demeanor.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, and it probably doesn’t, here is the chorus from the song:

I don’t want to wait
For our lives to be over
I want to know right now
What will it be

In tandem with this song, my random celebrity rant and the happiness factor, a new movie is coming out aiming at what this blog is all about. My cousin, who happens to be blogging along a similar topic, just alerted me to the film “Post Grad.” It comes out this weekend and stares Alexis Bledel, one of my fav chic-actresses.

I cannot believe the timing of this film.

It’s about my life, and yours.