what a way to make a living
clock in clock out lock in lock out
“the system isn’t broken. it’s working exactly as intended.” - something i heard once that still haunts me because it’s so dystopian. this isn’t a manifesto. it’s just me trying to rationalize the feeling of drifting into a version of adulthood that looks nothing like what i imagined. and all the tradeoffs that come with it. i hope you guys enjoy even though this is sad as fuck. see you guys soon, please come visit me in boston i miss you guys so much.
there are 36 ceiling tiles above my desk.
i count them every time the clock slows down.
there is a woman two rows over who smells like warm basil. she talks about her husband like they’ve never stopped having their first kiss. i watch her type emails with her long clacky ass pink nails.
my badge is backwards more often than not. maybe it’s a metaphor. maybe it’s just a bad lanyard.
every morning i drink the vanilla latte from the office coffee machine. it tastes like the color beige. i don’t even like it. but i drink it because it’s there and because i’m here.
i take the train. i arrive. i click. i thank. i walk. i pipette. i blink. i go home. and now i do this for 40 more years.
is this all there is to life?
i’m a technical development intern at moderna. norwood, massachusetts. it sounds made up when i say it out loud. like something you’d give an undergrad in a shitty movie to prove they’re driven. and i guess i am. i pipette things. i troubleshoot instruments. i write things down in all caps. i nod a lot in meetings. what i do makes sense on paper. i’m just not sure i do.
no one warned me that a routine could hollow you out.
i think what’s starting to bother me, really bother me, is that i’m adjusting. i’ve only been doing this for a few weeks and i already know how long to wait before the elevator shows up. i know how to smile the right amount and i know how to pretend that knowing the difference between a calendar hold and an invite means something profound.
all of this feels like becoming fluent in a language you were never meant to learn.
my manager keeps telling me, “wow you’re getting a head start,” like i’m supposed to be proud. like being 19 and already knowing how to sit through a 30 minute meeting that could’ve been two bullet points is some kind of badge of honor.
i really could not give a flying fuck about this head start.
and that’s what this summer feels like— a life i didn’t necessarily ask for, rehearsing itself into permanence.
sometimes i think about how most people don’t choose their lives. not actively. it’s less of a decision and more of a slow agreement. you accept the commute. you get used to the meetings. your clothes get more neutral. you stop pulling up in business casual because pink nail lady is always wearing sweats. your weekends shrink. your goals become quieter, less about becoming someone and more about not messing up the version of yourself you’ve already sold to the world. and it doesn’t happen because you’re lazy or scared. it happens because the world we live in and the system is designed to reward you the moment you stop asking questions.
capitalism is really good at making obedience feel like self-actualization. it seduces you with sweet nothings and soft praise. it whispers, “you’re doing amazing,” in your ear while handing you a company backpack and a 401(k). it drowns you in logistics and calls it independence and it makes you track your steps and answer emails with three exclamation points on your three monitors and pretends that’s the same thing as being alive!!!
and if you’re not careful, you start to believe it. you start to think fulfillment is having no room to live. like actually live. you convince yourself that you’re building something. a name? legacy perhaps? but really, you’re just becoming easier to manage. more predictable. less prone to asking inconvenient questions like, do i even want this?
there’s something about getting good at a job, like really good, that tricks you into thinking you chose it and that your competence is the same thing as passion. but i’ve learned that you can be excellent at something that drains you. you can get promoted for playing a part so convincingly that you forget it’s not actually you.
i don’t think most people sell out. i think they slowly melt into the shape they were handed and call it growth. but growth that doesn’t make you feel more alive isn’t growth. it’s grooming.
and true to my suspicions, at some point between getting this offer and getting my badge, i stopped asking whether i even liked any of this. i was proud of me. and i told myself that discomfort is part of growth, that this is what opportunity looks like, and this is how “real life” begins. but now i’m scared shitless of how it continues.
the worst part isn’t that i’m exhausted. i’m actually pretty awake. the worst part is that i’m starting to understand the appeal.
there’s something dangerously seductive about structure. it hands you a shape and asks nothing of your insides. you don’t have to wonder what kind of person you are if your outlook calendar already decides for you. what haunts me is how quietly i’ve become okay with it. i’m so grateful to be here. even if “here” is my 3rd cup of coffee, a desk chair that sinks too low, and a vague but constant sense that i’m wasting my own life in the name of preparing for it.
in my words, there’s something grotesque about being praised for your potential while it’s being actively drained from you. most people don’t even notice it happening.
and i know how this sounds. it’s easy to call me dramatic. privileged. naive. keep the insults going. but maybe what i’m trying to say is i haven’t been in this world long enough to be numb to it yet. and i really do not want to be.
people always say they crave stability. it’s a word that gets thrown around like a virtue. find something stable. look for stability. be stable. but nobody ever defines what that means. and somewhere along the way, i think these same people mistake stability for identitity.
they think it’ll make the ache stop. like if you just get the right job, the right relationship, the right zip code, the restlessness will go away. but i’ve been more restless here than i ever was in chaos. maybe because it’s easier to blame the ache on uncertainty. it’s harder to admit that comfort can make you lonely too. and yet we crave it, because comfort looks more like control.
it makes sense, evolutionarily. our brains fucking love predictability. but the same mechanism that keeps us safe also keeps us stuck. we call it structure, but a lot of the time it’s just inertia with a nicer font.
because once your life is optimized, what reason is there to dream?
i still live with my best friend. yesterday she spent 12 hours at her lab. we’ve been through basically everything together, but now, between commutes and calendars and separate lives we don’t see each other as much. still, every night, i practice mixing her fave house tracks for hours while she screams about being understimulated, a joke but not really. and those are the moments that save me. those intervals that remind me i’m still a real person. that i used to feel things at full volume. that we both did.
we used to plan lives that made no sense. list countries we’d move to on a whim with our respective husbands. we used to believe in impulse. now even our spontaneity fits neatly into our google calendars. and i can’t tell if this is maturity or if it’s just fear dressed up really nicely.
i think that’s what makes this whole thing so disorienting. it’s not that i’m faking it. it’s that i’m not. i wake up early. i haul ass to work. i’m actually quite good at it. i find immense amounts of pleasure and satisfaction in getting it right. and that’s the scariest part: that some part of me enjoys this enough to forget that i didn’t used to want it. that this was never the plan. and somehow i used to imagine more.
and when you’re surrounded by people who believe this life is worth it, who make it look normal to schedule your joy and suppress your hunger and call it discipline, it becomes harder to remember that you were ever planning on wanting something else.
the world handed me this job offer with a bow and called it success. and i, like everyone else, said thank you.
but now that i’ve unwrapped it, i’m realizing i don’t actually know what i said yes to. at first it felt like progress. and it probably still is. but progress towards what? i keep wondering what would happen if i just kept doing this forever. would i wake up at 27 with better shoes? a better resume? would i still mistake momentum for alignment? would i still be collecting gold stars for playing a character i’m slowly forgetting how to snap out of?
because i think that’s what this internship, and maybe this whole summer, is teaching me. structure isn’t netural. it reshapes you. it teaches you how to want things that are easy to measure. and the longer you stay wrapped up in it, the more it rewards you for forgetting what used to matter to you before your mornings smelled like vanilla and your badge always scanned green.
i used to think adulthood would arrive like a letter in the mail. a lease. a paycheck. a husband who knows where to buy good tomatoes. but its scary how quickly it creeps up on you.
this is probably my 3rd or 4th post about growing up. and its because its something that weighs on my mind more than you can ever fathom. growing up feels like triple monitors and wearing down. but god i hope growing up doesn’t always feel like shrinking.
i unfortunately do not have a five year plan. i do not know what i want to do with my life. but i know i want a life that requires something from me. not just my 9-5. but my taste. my voice. my vision.
i want a life that demands i stay awake in it.
and maybe the real reason this summer scares me isn’t because it’s too structure. maybe it’s because i’m starting to see how easy it would be to let it shape me.
and how slowly, how sweetly, i might let it.
maybe this is what people mean when they say stability is important. not that it fulfills you. but that it keeps you from falling apart. and maybe that’s enough for some people. but i think i want more than to just be held together. i truly deeply want to be moved.
today i caught myself counting the ceiling tiles again not because i was bored but because it calmed me. i knew exactly how many there would be. no surprises. just something i could predict, measure, and be really good at. 36.
and today i reminded myself of the time when the unknown thrilled me. and when i never flinched at all.
in the wise words of taylor swift, yet again, “how could a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?” maybe because 18 is all desire and 22 is all data.
but i hope i don’t lose that part of me that still aches for more. so here’s what i’m holding onto: there’s a version of me out there that still believes in something better than beige. and maybe writing this is just how i dig her back out.