The Failing Millennial

When you wake up feeling useless

Snooze... Snooze... Snooze... Okay maybe wake the hell up now. I might mean this literally or figuratively depending on where you are at in life. I can't tell you how many times I've woken up without purpose, and too often with a wine hangover. When life doesn't go to plan, it's so easy to let it eat at us and eventually we allow ourselves to become defeated. It takes a lot of energy to rise up and not let what knocks us down keep us down.

As #failingmillennials we put pressure on ourselves to be on the move all the time and we always need to figure out the next step; always having our life together. At least I know I did, and I know many of my friends shared this pressure with me. So when you are hit in the head with a rejection, or whatever your version of failure is that has you reading this, we don't know what the hell to do. Aside from going to the nearest liquor store and bakery, we are essentially lost. Where to go, what to do, how to move on.

After I semi got over myself and my bad mood, I made a list of goals. These were very personal goals, not professional. Why? Because I am out of school and have random part-time jobs to keep me going for now. I'm not happy but this is me at a standstill until I can keep fighting for my dream, unfortunately there's a year wait to do that, so here I am.

Goal #1: Get the hell back in shape

This may seem so "new years resolution-y" and irrelevant to the situation at hand but it has really helped me. I've been a runner for almost 10 years now and just being active always helped me keep a clear head. As I am human, and fitness can lose priority some times, I was not as active as I should have or could have been in the months dealing with being a #failingmillennial. I was sad, I was angry, I felt useless. So getting out of bed to grab the weights or go for a run was clearly not happening most days. I am lucky that it has been my priority and a constant throughout my life that getting back into it wasn't too difficult.

The point I made for myself with this goal was to (1) get back into a routine and (2) get rid of the jiggle. You know you are out of shape the moment you hit a bump driving and a body part that never jiggled before basically waves "hello I'm here you lazy piece of shit". So with these superficial intentions I had with getting back into a consistent routine of exercising, I felt mentally better. Eventually I got enough confident back to decide that I was going to slowly start training for another half-marathon race. As a kinesiologist I will always praise exercise as an effective tool to combat diseases, obesity and it's co-morbidities, prolong age-related declines and all that fun stuff, but nothing amazes me more than the effects exercise has on the mind.

Goal #2: Do something fun for myself

As a person who has been too focused on school or too broke because of school to do anything "fun" like travel or spend hundreds of dollars for some festival or anything most millennials consider fun, this goal was tough. What the fuck am I going to do? Well honestly, I still haven't done it. My grandmother gave me $100 for Christmas to spend on myself and I paid my phone bill. All things considered, my track record for being fun is a very short list.

The idea came on a whim when I was talking to my good friend and old roommate about her graduation from nursing school this coming spring (someone who has an epic track record for adventures). She recently moved only four hours away so during one of our frequent facetime sessions we started talking about taking a road trip. This was an amazing idea I quickly became set on happening. We began planning almost daily, sending each other cool airbnb pages to look at or awesome attractions or articles about places to see in the area we were going. This was my thing, my fun thing I needed to help me experience something new and exciting in life without worrying about my future, just take the road with a great friend and explore my country.