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The New Rules of Community

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The funny thing about new experiences is that you’ve never had them before.

Our experiences build up and we start to think, “I know what I am doing.” But then one day, poof, you encounter something totally different and new.

Recently for me, this newest experience is community after college.

I thought if I had learned anything in college, it was how to do community. You just roll up to the event being hosted so that you can make friends with people with similar interests, say “we should get coffee sometime”, and then boom: one million best friends.

Turns out that isn’t how the world works. First of all, people are older than you and younger than you. They have jobs that are nothing like yours. They have different backgrounds and beliefs. They can have a lot in common with you but they can also be literally grandparents. And suddenly, all of these people are a part of your community.

And you have no idea what to do with that.

Can I trust you with my hurts? Can I be of any help to you in your struggles? Do I have anything to contribute to your life? Will I be rejected after I have invested in you or will I be rejected if I don’t invest in your life?

The clear, concise rules of community were stripped away and instead you are left with a host of what if’s and how to’s. And that can be really scary. When I found myself in that place, half of my heart said, “just give up, you can make it if you stick to the surface. Keep your cards close and play what you have to.”

But that isn’t what God had intended for us. Over and over I heard, “Loneliness is a gift that calls us back into community” or “Press into these relationships and seek opportunities for vulnerability.”

I had preached words like these before to people. I have written blogs about vulnerability and belonging. So why has it been so hard for me to be intentional and be myself? Why was it so different this time?

I think ultimately, I couldn’t place myself and when I couldn’t place myself, I thought the community didn’t have the room for me. I was isolating myself before I had the chance to be isolated. I wasn’t willing to give it time to organically grow either. I was desperate for those deep, three year friendships three weeks in. In case you were wondering, that is impossible.

Luckily, God didn’t let me fall into a trap of my own self-doubt and insecurity. Starting at work, I grew into the community with my co-workers. Sure they valued me as a part of the team, but they loved me too. That is rare. That is a big deal. And I love them too. Deeply. Just like I had with my roommates and committee members. I got to do life forty hours a week with people I love. It is something I won’t take for granted.

Then I had a foundation I could build from. And it gets a little easier once you know you can make it out there. So now I have to keep risking awkward silences and small talk to get to the bigger, deeper connection.

The way I see it, we are all human beings. Whether we admit it or not, we are all afraid of the same rejection and disappointment. But we have the opportunity to step out and do as Christ commanded us, love God and love our neighbor. When we live in accordance to God’s will – and God wants us to love and live in community – He will help us get through the unknown and connect our hearts. You can endure the “get to know you” because it’s the only way to become fully known.

So brothers and sisters, as we keep on living in this crazy world, let’s trust God in the process. Pressing in when things get hard, and giving thanks when things are easy.

Chapter 2: Not a Horror Story After All

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Unknowingly, I have operated under the assumption that if my life after graduation was different it automatically meant that it was bad. File that under incredibly dumb things that I believed as a twenty-something.

I had a really hard time trusting that I was where I was supposed to be. Everything changed. I felt alone, I was scared, and I could not stop comparing myself. It felt like everyone else was so satisfied, progressing so smoothly. I felt fragmented, like I had lost my sense of belonging.

But I was in a chapter that I could not leave and could not skip. I prayed for gratitude. I prayed for patience. I even prayed for change. One of the major issues I was running into was that things had changed, and I assumed that was a loss.

My parents had told me a hundred times while I was in school that college was “not real life”. I had completely rejected that statement like any kid who knows way more than their parents would. How could it not be real life if I was living it?

When January came so did the culture shock of living in Cleveland without Lee. I didn’t realize how celebrated I had felt as a Lee student. To me, Lee students were heroes. I stepped off my pedestal and into reality.  (Cue existential crisis #1)

After losing my identity, I lost another portion of college life. Conveniently having a thousand friends. I didn’t realize how easy it was to have so many friends in college.  Sure, you are busy in school, but more often than not, you are doing whatever you have to do with your best friend by your side. Now I had a schedule unlike any of the people that I had previously spent all day, everyday with. Community looked completely different when the vast majority of my time was spent alone. (Cue existential crisis #2)

And then there was school. Minus the four years I spent developing basic human functions like walking and talking, I had been a student. To end that chapter – essentially the only thing I had ever known – was confusing. Measuring success in school was as easy as a GPA. The course of correction was simple enough. As a life-long perfectionist I was very comfortable with this system. I knew when I was smart, hard-working, and capable of success. And then, poof. No more grades. What was the new measure of success? Was it food on the table? Money? Hours spent in prayer? Books I had read? (Cue existential crisis #3)

After about four months of everything from “I’m okay” to “oh wait am I literally dying” moments I started to think about what my parents had said. I knew that my college experience was indeed real life, but it was nothing like what I could expect the rest of my life to look like. The majority of the world does not live the way college students do (thank God).

People don’t fit neatly into categories.

Friendships and love require lots of hard work and rarely come naturally.

Success is different to every person, you will never look successful to every person you encounter.

The “real world” is different. It is a change. It feels nothing like all of the life experience you have ever had. This unknown is hard to get used to and at first feels a lot like failure and loss and all of the bad things you fear. But this change is just that, different.

Transitions will come through out your entire life. Navigating the newness of marriage and parenthood and retirement and every other chapter can easily catch us off guard when different = bad. Learning who you are in each chapter comes back to knowing who you are in Christ. The changing chapters will never out weigh the importance of following God. We can’t predict our stories, but we can know that the Author has our best ending already written.

We can never know the bigger picture in this life, yet somehow, we have to know it is so much more important than this moment. Faith is what gives us the power to conquer fear. God moves in transition. Count on it.

What are you doing with your life?

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So I graduated from college. You know what that means… I get asked 278,342 times a day what I am doing with my life.

Every time I get asked that I want to turn to sand and blow away in the wind. Or shake the person and ask them what they are doing with their life. I want to say several different things like, “having this conversation with you” or “if I told you I would have to kill you.”

But the reality is that right now, I work in retail. At first, I was really ashamed. It isn’t fair to be ashamed of my job, great people – thousands of people, have jobs exactly like mine. When the question inevitably pops up in conversation, I would feel like I was letting the interviewer down, even if they were a complete stranger. I felt like everyone expected me to do something really great right away. After all, not everyone graduates from college at 20. Surely, if anyone was going to start off as a CEO right away it would be me.

Friends, family, that right there is some nasty, toxic pride. In a way, I think God very intentionally placed me where I am right now because if I am being honest, I have let people judge me by my performance since day one. It worked for a long time, too. You could ask me about what was going on or how I was and I could provide a three minute explanation of how busy I was with so many great things.

I was doing great things, but too often, for the wrong reason.

I thought the only way that I could serve God was if I did everything, perfectly. Jesus would have gotten the internship with the non-profit that saves babies right? He would have immediately been promoted to Director? He would still sleep eight hours and get coffee with his friends and followed the Whole 30?

First of all, no.

True, Jesus did amazing things, but his life wasn’t so extraordinary that the kings felt inferior compared to his resumé. (He was also the perfect son of God and I am the daughter of a navy nuke guy.) Jesus served God by the way he lived. 

He took time for people, he prayed, he taught, he celebrated others, he made time for family and disciples. He did not compare himself, brag about miracles, turn loving others into a start-up with a cool logo, forget about his Father.

Jesus and his disciples model a life that reminds us that fisherman or tax collector, the most important thing about your life is how you are living it. That is something I missed in my busy-all-star-greatness. I am not saying that I was an all-together garbage person the past three years, but there was an undue anxiety to prove myself as a worthy servant of Christ.

Jarod Noel said at the Focus conference when we humble ourselves in our communities, we are able to focus on God’s will being done instead of whether or not God is using us. Humility doesn’t keep score. Along that same line, Tim Keller said in Every Good Endeavor, understanding work as being the hands and feet of Jesus “elevates the purpose of work from making a living to loving our neighbor and at the same time releases us from the crushing burden of working primarily to prove ourselves.”

Do I need to say that again? Understanding work as being the hands and feet of Jesus releases us from the crushing burden of working primarily to prove ourselves. 

When we frame work that way, it becomes clear that every detail of our ordinary lives adds up, and should ultimately paint a much bigger picture. Work proves that Jesus loves our neighbor, not that we can do great things. We then have the opportunity to make room in our lives for the pieces that the world may not value as much as our Creator does. Learning these lessons in my post-grad season may not have done much for my resumé, but has helped heal me and brought me a new peace I am excited to take into the next season.

I have hope that God does have a bigger plan for my life than the answers I can give you right now. I hope that He will make me a teacher and wife and aunt and mother and bridesmaid and secretary and so many other things. But through it all, it is so important that I remember the most important title I can ever adorn is “loved daughter of the Heavenly Father.” The works I carry out due to my faith in God are the most important and most valuable.

Type Two: Importance and Belonging

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Hi, my name is Halle Camilleri and according to the enneagram I have a type 2 personality.

I took this test after hearing a lot about it from my friends. When I read my results I got wrecked (If you don’t know what “wrecked” means, think of having a significant emotional awakening). The first thing I read said:

  • Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved
  • Basic Desire: To feel loved

What. Have you been reading my prayer journal? It was the bottom line I had been searching for in counseling, books, prayer, you name it. To feel loved. The fear of not being worthy. My big learning experience in college was learning to love others for the purpose of loving others. Not to be loved in return. Not to be recognized as a loving person. Just to love.

Well it turns out this is an entire personality type and as I went further into my research, many of my friends and family struggle with exactly the same thing. Type two people think the most valuable way to use their time is by helping others and making them feel loved. However, it can be really difficult to accept the same love and aid from others. It is easy to be graceful to others, but hard to show yourself grace.

Type twos can be very healthy, loving, giving people. They feel validated by being needed and purposeful in a role of service. They are the “mom” of the friend group. However, the shadow side of type twos is the secret pride, self-deception, and over-involvement in the lives of others.

Bingo.

The exact flaw I had spent my entire life grappling with. The thing about my mom, my brother, my friends, that we all try so desperately to either keep hidden or justify. But there was the answer. We want to be loved, we make ourselves needed, and we can either act in humility with no strings attached or we can grow to resent those we serve when they don’t love us back in a way that helps us cope with our fear of being un-needed.

I needed a minute.

Being human is not one of my favorite attributes of myself but if there is anything I have learned over the past few years, it is that when we acknowledge our struggles and work to be vulnerable to overcome them, we can live transparently in our community. My personality requires that I question my motives. I have to watch my thought process in order to track with my emotional well-being and keep my pride in check.

Pride is dangerous. It is 100% true that everyone needs to be loved and feel like they matter. But there is a difference between belonging and feeling important. Belonging is having a place where you are loved and cared for. Being important is seeking recognition and accomplishment in order to gain a reputation for your “selflessness”. Belonging brings healing, being important causes pain and insecurity.

Love is selfless. There are no strings attached. Type two people can love people so well but we have to be aware and intentional of the tendency to replace belonging with pride. Giving isn’t about receiving. Love isn’t about being recognized.

Sleeping at Last recently released a single about the type two personality. The words have given me so much peace and better understanding about how my own heart works. I highly recommend that you take the test for yourself and do some research. Learning how you relate and validate yourself helps us to build healthy habits. I don’t have all the answers, and I promise I never will, but I can keep investigating and working to help us better understand one another.

Love and life are precious God-given gifts. I want to be able to share mine with all of you the best ways I can.

Lost Plans

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The person I thought I would become is very different from the person I am.

When I sent my application into Lee University I imagined where I would be in the Fall of 2017. I would be engaged. I would be working, doing whatever it is that people do in PR. I would have been involved in a few areas of campus. My friend group from summer honors would hang out together every week, just as tight knit as we were during those two weeks. I would have made it through the best two years of my life, learning and growing into this incredible person. You know, safely following God deeper than my feet could ever wander (can I get an amen?).

I loved my plan, my dreams. I prayed that God would grant me my prayers for this incredible life changing experience.

But, wait a minute, with all of these safety nets and sources of validation, where was the life change?

If you ever read anything from my old blog you know that going into Lee I hard-core struggled to go day-to-day without knowing the purpose of my life. I have been frustrated over and over by unanswered prayers and all of those situations that force me to be still and know that He is God. Every encounter was a quick, harsh, judgement. Yes, this is it. My best friend, my new roommate, my first love, my college, my major, my career. This is the answered prayer, right? I was a one and done kind of gal.

Entering into relationships and commitment, I didn’t question my own judgement. I followed open doors, just hoping that these were the doors that would lead me to the right destination. There was rarely “prayerful consideration”. There was mostly “yes”.

Now, where did that get me? Honestly, in a lot of cases, into some really great places. The issue came about when I started to lose myself to the situation I had entered myself into. I took on identities based on learning experiences. Instead of seeing a path, I set up camp, hoping that the outside world would just let me be. I didn’t want the plan to change.

But when this April hit, I realized that my time was running out. The identities and titles were stripped away. All of my “God-given-masks” were lifted. It was me, God, and a brand new season.

And I was crushed.

It hit me that I was still on a journey. Lee had not been the final destination. As soon as the plans changed I threw my hands up, saying I don’t know if I can do this. 

One of the best things that has ever happened to me was having my comfort stripped away.

As I pushed further and further to try to find myself again, I was finally forced to look outside of myself. I had to cling to my family and my community. I had to ask God the hard questions. I had to seek His peace. I had to be broken enough to ask Him to put me back together.

I’ve learned that my belonging can’t come from anything I can do. My belonging can’t come from anything I can be.

My sense of self, my purpose, must always be to love God and know him more. Learning that I can never satisfy myself, that I won’t meet my expectations, I won’t follow my own plan, taught me that the only thing that will ever satisfy me is looking at my life the way that God does.

Everything is temporary, my brothers and sisters. We have nothing to cling to. No expectations for tomorrow. All we can do is be grateful for everything given to us. The plan is to follow Him with everything we can. Our plan should never to be to make a name for ourselves. I want your favorite part about me to be how I earnestly seek after the Lord.

So I am done writing my own plans and giving myself directions. I won’t let you or myself or anyone else decide who I should be. When I became who I wanted to be, that was the problem. I made it about the opinions of anyone other than God.

I am so, so glad that He has reminded me for the 32,473,947,985th time that He is all I need.

Enough is Unattainable

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One of the words that I hate most is enough.

Enough feels like a chain around my ankle that keeps me from coming up for air.

I will never be beautiful enough. I will never be smart enough. I will never be funny enough. I will never work hard enough. I will never be loved enough. I will never have enough energy, money, or time.

Sometimes, the weight of the pressure to be enough for myself – not even for others – is crushing. It is always present when I walk into a room of new people or even when I sit down around a table with my friends. When you factor in the expectations that I perceive that others have for me it will always be a losing battle and I will never be enough. If I have to be enough, then I can look forward to a lifetime of getting home and feeling sick as I analyze every part of my day to see where I didn’t measure up.

Because recently I realized that for me, enough isn’t even perfection. Enough is being better than the absolute best. It means comparing my worst parts of myself to the best of others. It is collecting all of the good things I hear people say about others and working day and night to make sure that I go above and beyond to make sure I can be more than that.

When I am not enough I am a failure.

This practice of measuring up is not only unhealthy, it goes against everything I am actually trying to be according to the gospel. When you have to be enough there is no room for humility. There is no grace or gratitude for your gifts or others. Instead of seeing the kingdom all I can see is my own perceived brokenness.

I believe lies in the “enough competition” like “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” actually means “If you are doing enough others will do unto you”. I believe God stops fighting for us when we don’t sit down for a Instagram worthy daily devotional. I believe that I have to be an invaluable member of the team in order to take part at all.

But all of these beliefs are lies. They are standards that can’t be reached and they prevent us from hope, joy, and love. They breed competition and insecurity. They make it impossible to be the person I really want to be, a person with faith and hope for the future.

I wish I could tell you that it is easy to just stop the “enough competition” with a simple prayer or just being aware. But it’s a fight that takes everything you’ve got. Prayer and awareness certainly help. Vulnerability is a key player. Gratitude can go a long way. The most important thing is that we keep fighting together. I still don’t have an easy fix for you but I promise to be vulnerable along the journey.

I hope that is enough for you.

Almost Dun Aengus

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I was not ready for this year.

I am not ready to graduate in December. I am not ready to sit down with my parents and look at the next 10 months and how much it is going to cost and where I am going to find a job and where I am going to live and how I am going to make it out there in the “real world”.

I was not ready to try to balance two jobs, a leadership position, and being a full time student. I failed a lot this year at all of those things. I missed days at work and turned in papers I was not proud of and repeatedly let down my team and my organization.

I am not ready for right now. While my roommate packs her boxes and my best friends write graduation speeches and I stand in front of people that I love and tell them goodbye when I feel like I only just said hello.

The tension between here and now is something that I have never experienced in this way before. I have always been ready for what is next. I was ready to move to Tennessee. I was ready to go to Lee. I was ready to start the new jobs. I was ready for everything because for so long God’s plan for my life seemed to come with an instruction manual. First grade, second grade, middle school, high school, college. Then this time comes where we don’t get to know exactly what that next step is. You have to wait. It reminds me of Dun Aengus.

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Dun Aengus is a battlefield in Ireland on the side of a cliff on the Aran Islands. The trip up to the cliff was pretty brutal for me. I may seem like a wilderness explorer, but I would say my comfort level in the great outdoors is about the same as your average 7 year-old. I hiked up this big hill over slippery rocks as slowly as I could. Clinging to walls and my friend Graham the whole way. I was terrified. I hated it. I wanted to cry and I was so out of breath. I just kept praying that I would make it without falling.

And then we got to the top. It was so incredibly beautiful. I walked out to the edge of the cliff and I looked at the powerful ocean.

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I stood there and I thought about how God called me up there. He calls me out there into the powerful ocean that absolutely no sane person would ever willingly travel into. There is no boat or equipment that could help prepare you for the rocky cliff or choppy waters. I know “Oceans” is basically a joke at this point but I just kept thinking, take me deeper than my feet could ever wander. 

And while this year has felt like I have been climbing up cliffs and falling in the waters I know that God has called me to come out even deeper. That is what graduating early means to me. Post-grad at 20 is a giant terrifying cliff that I hate climbing but the life God has planned is an incredible, beautiful view that I can’t experience any other way.

I can’t complain, because even though so many times through out this journey I couldn’t catch my breath, people have never stopped cheering me on. Even though I was not in shape to make this journey God has placed the people and support that I needed in order to make it through this year. Just because it wasn’t easy to get here, doesn’t mean I didn’t make it to the top.

I think the mistake I have made at this point is that I thought that finishing this year meant that I had to stop, get off the path and make way for someone else. After all, I am done with my leadership position and I only have one semester left. What good can come of one semester anyway?

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Well, this is what it looked like from the top, just before you go into the battlefield where you can see the ocean and the cliffs. This is where I am right now. It is so beautiful and I fought so hard to get here but I still have one more battlefield to cross. God isn’t done showing me where I am going yet. This next part is scary, but we are all going there eventually. And when I get there I am going to be glad that I fought to get there.

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So with that I say:

2017, what do you have for me next?

 

Share Your Joy, Share Your Pain

I struggled this week with the same ole weaknesses and fears. The same doubts of my worthiness. But through it all I have refused to avert my own joy.

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I don’t think I ever expected to be sitting where I am right now. Not physically, I mean, I am in my bed which makes sense because it is 1:30 A.M. But emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. I never knew that my heart could be both so heavy and so light.

It’s one of those weeks where you look back and think “Am I even the same person I was seven days ago?” The answer is honestly no for me. Usually these weeks of exponential growth come after I receive a big ole yes from a job, a club, a class. That isn’t actually the case this week.

In fact, this week I have gotten a few no’s.

I sat across the table in a coffeeshop and wrestled with vulnerability and God’s timing.

I picked up a test with a grade I was not excited to see.

I sat in the car after a long day of deciding the leadership for the organization I love so much. Realizing that this would be a team I would not be a part of. That I had just replaced myself with one of these incredible leaders.

I struggled this week with the same ole weaknesses and fears. The same doubts of my worthiness.

But through it all I have refused to avert my own joy. Averting joy is an idea I learned from Brene Brown, an author who has specialized her research in shame. The idea is that whenever we approach a situation where we have to risk failure or rejection we cannot downplay our emotions, but instead we revel in the joy the opportunity presents. She writes in The Gifts of Imperfection,

“It’s only been in the past few years that I’ve learned that playing down the exciting stuff doesn’t take away the pain when it doesn’t happen. It also creates a lot of isolation. Once you’ve diminished the importance of something your friends are not likely to call and say, “I am sorry that didn’t work out. I know you were excited about it.”

With each step I am taking entering into this next phase of work, internships, stepping down from leadership, new relationships, and eventually the impending doom of whatever lies beyond graduation day, it is so important not to downplay these next phases of life. It is crucial that we invite our community into the joy and the pain that these various rejections and acceptances can bring. That isn’t easy. In fact, it is often terrifying to be honest with people about hopefulness.

This weekend I have experienced so much joy by playing a role in the engagement of two of my best friends. Sharing in their love with our community has been so inspiring. Even as I have faced rejection this week I have not walked alone. Just as they invited us into their joy, I have invited them into my struggle. The same goes for those selected for cabinet and those who weren’t. I can be so incredibly excited for those ready to take on this commitment but I can also empathize with those not selected as I get ready to watch these people form a new community that I won’t get to fully be a part of. When we have empathy for each other out of humility we have the same victories and short-comings.

But the joy I feel is not discounted by my doubt. God is not limited by my shallow vision. The community will not let me feel the highs and the lows alone. I am standing in a place I could have never chosen for myself and for that I am truly grateful.

This week I will turn 20 years old. I will get on a plane and fly to Ireland. I will welcome a new cabinet. I will love people well. I will make time to seek God’s will. I will feel every emotion and every fear and I will not allow them paralyze me.

Risk sharing your heart with your community. Risk walking with them. Risk doing life together. See the difference it makes when you share in this journey with humility.

Audience Versus Community

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You know what is real? The pressure to perform.

In leadership, the classroom, my personal relationships, I find myself stepping on to a stage this year. The more I accomplish the more I feel the pressure to nail my performance in every arena of my life.

We find ourselves feeling this pressure from the very beginning of the year. Where does this come from? Who told me that if I miss a line or forget my cues that I will be rejected?

It’s time to take a hard look at the root of the problem. The problem is that when we see our responsibilities as a performance to be rated and reviewed by our audience, we won’t ever be pleased. Even if we’re receiving positive feedback, calculating our worth from those who surround us will build a wall between us and our community. 

It was so easy for me to make friends the first year I was at Lee. It was a simple formula of name, fun fact, major, year. People found me funny, smart and kind. It was easy to keep this up with the quick hellos that we’d exchange. I felt known, liked and comfortable. I became a persona instead of a person. 

As time has progressed I’ve developed real relationships. People I have shared a fair share of awkward silences and boring moments with. We’ve made it through meetings, car rides and long nights in the house. In each of these relationships, I have had this moment of panic when they realize that I am not always funny, organized or put-together.

God is going to reveal me as a flawed human being as fast as he can and he is going to enjoy it because it will force me to grapple with real intimacy.

-Donald Miller

In this quote I am able to identify that piece that is missing in my life. The pressure to perform comes from a fear of intimacy. I don’t want people who depend on me to know I could fail them. I don’t want my friends to know I have almost no discretion when it comes to a funny meme and a stupid meme. I don’t want my professors to know I am not going over the top studying for their class every night. I want to be a perfect person, a good performer.

Unfortunately, being perfect is impossible. The first two weeks I’ve been at school I felt like I learned that lesson over and over. I am sure my friends were sick of hearing me say it: “I failed.” I felt like I was failing in every arena because I continued to be a flawed human being. I was so scared that I would be rejected for my flaws.

There were only a few people I was honest with about these fears and I found myself drawn to them. I wondered what had changed as I found myself becoming more and more introverted this year. I could only recharge around the people who already knew how flawed I felt. As I read Scary Close by Donald Miller I realized it was because I wasn’t putting on a performance for them. I had nothing to hide. They knew how imperfect I could be. In fact, they expected imperfection from me.

As soon as I realized this was the case, I was able to make a choice. I could either celebrate the discomfort of flawed relationships or I could hold back and keep up the performance. The choice wasn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s scary to accept your flaws. It’s scary to be unashamed of the awkwardness of growth. But it’s humbling. It’s worth doing it afraid.

Because in order to be a good leader, friend, daughter, student – whatever the case – I am going to have to be flawed. I am going to have to strive for excellence. I am going to have to laugh at myself. I won’t be able to do it all, and I won’t be able to do it alone.

But the performance comes after the verdict this year. I am loved. I am accepted.

So it’s time to get messy and work. I am dropping my mask and learning how to live in my community instead of performing for the audience.

A Guide to Your First Adult Summer

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It sort of sneaks up on you, but someday you will find yourself unlocking the door to your apartment.

That’s right, your apartment.

One day I walked into my apartment after work and went to my room. This very first time, I took a minute in the threshold of my room and thought to myself, is this really happening? Am I really paying my own rent and living in this place? I knew for weeks this moment was coming but it still managed to sneak up on me. There is just something so unexpected about the first day you really feel like an adult. It is a pretty simple day, nothing extraordinary, but at the end you’ve worked and provided for yourself. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still not completely independent (Love you Mom and Dad) – but I am taking care of business this summer.

And I’ve absolutely loved it. It’s hard work, but it’s so worth while. I believe in what I’m doing. I feel fulfilled. It’s a dream come true.

So I thought I’d share this experience, some things you need to know about what it’s been like spending this summer in conference rooms and making cold calls. The summer you learn to stop thinking: I’m just a kid. 

Adult Diet

If you think “man cannot survive on apples and coffee alone” YOU ARE WRONG*!! My number one concern the first half of this summer was that I would be hungry or tired at work but this diet has proven to be excellent. I keep apples scattered through out my office, car, purse – I am basically the Easter Bunny of apples. The only exception to this diet is that every Monday I get a $5 burrito because

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*Disclaimer: Don’t worry, I actually eat like a normal person but I do have apples and coffee for breakfast everyday and it is great. I probably wouldn’t survive if that was all I ate.

Adult Exercise

I have found the secret to finding that summer bod you’ve always dreamed of! Follow these simple steps and you too can be an adult office goddess like myself.

Step One: Spend as much time at your desk as you possibly can. Only move if you feel like your soul will leave your body should you spend one more moment at your desk.

Step Two: Take the stairs. ESPECIALLY if there is a threat of having to be in the elevator at the same time as another human being. It does not matter if it is your best friend or a complete stranger. There is something about workplace elevators. Small talk and silence are equally uncomfortable in that tiny box of social anxiety.

Step Three: Are you familiar with a dollie cart? Well let me tell you, that baby is going to be your new best friend. Try pulling that beauty all over campus with as much stuff as you can possibly squeeze on that bad boy in one trip. My top two dollie experiences were taking two corn hole boards across campus and when I used it to get 3,117 pieces of candy up to our office.

Step Four: Wear clothes that are appropriate for the workplace, but not appropriate for the 104 degree heat index. Don’t try to tell me not to wear corduroy pants in July because I won’t listen. The sweating will help you lose any water weight you might have. Also a piece of your sanity.

Step Five: At this point you should be pretty toned and fit, but just in case you aren’t, try keeping your supplies in a storage that is anywhere but your office. It could be another building, in a trailer, maybe another zip code. Bonus points if you have to climb stairs to get there. You’re going to be so fit.

Adult Free Time

When I come home from a long day of work, I really just want to clean. There is something so nice about being able to get in the kitchen and fix a problem so quickly without having to think about it. It’s like, oh, this dish is dirty. Well, now it’s not! Bam. Done. I never thought that I would long to clean a bathtub but here I am.

But cleaning is not all I do. I also watch movies because sometimes I will have two entire hours with nothing I have to work on. Or I will write. Or pray. Or paint. I am learning to play the Ukulele. I have nice candles that I burn while I plan for SLC. It’s incredibly relaxing to not have somewhere to be all the time. I spend all day doing something and then that is it. I get to go home.

But the sweetest of all of these is when I have company. I love hosting people in my home so much. I love making pancakes for breakfast. I love being able to catch up at night with friends over a cup of tea. People being here is still my favorite treat. It’s honestly a little nice being alone, but I still miss my friends and family terribly.

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Adult Job

I honestly never thought I would enjoy working. Think about it, it’s work. But this summer has proven me wrong. I managed to find two jobs – well honestly they found me – that I really love. I have learned so much about the community, my school, the future, what it all is really like. Some times things feel a little slow or ridiculous (like when you have to call the city of Chattanooga about bamboo) but I am loving every second of this field and the people I work with.

If you ever get the chance, work on campus during the summer. It is so cool to be a part of the community when it is just you and staff. We all joke around and get to know each other with out the pressure of thousands of students. Plus, the parking is A+.

And if you ever get the chance, apply to be a VISTA in the AmeriCorps Program. It has completely changed my life and my aspirations. I love being able to help people in a way where I essentially try to work myself out of a job. Connecting with volunteers and clients is the coolest network of people. You will look back and see the difference you can make in such a short amount of time. I can’t wait to take my boss’s job someday (you heard me Mike, you better get ready to take this thing nationally because I am going to direct the Ocoee Region).

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So get ready guys, it will be here before you know it. It will be glorious. You will love it. Congratulations son, you’re a man now.