POST GRAD STRESS appeared! Kelly used TRAVEL! It was super effective!

I was walking home from work yesterday when it suddenly struck me.

This is the first week that I’ve officially been truly and utterly POST-GRAD.

What about the last three months? You ask. Why have you deceived us with the misleading title of your blog?  Well, I should confess right now that I’ve kind of been cheating this summer.  My summer associate program -  11 kids getting paid to go to public speaking workshops, Facebook outings, and bar hopping (okay, maybe not the last one)- doesn’t really count as real life post grad. 

We also collect ALL the free things when we go on our Facebook outings

Now that that’s over and the other ten kids left Greenlining, I’m now in a real after-college setting: a rather predictable 9-5 job that doesn’t take me on field trips every day, and only a few friends sprinkled around the area.

How does that make me feel?  Absolutely terrified.  I feel like I’m the new kid in school, except my potential companions are Trader Joe’s shoppers, married and jaded thirty somethings at work, and gloomy bar patrons instead of students.  This I-need-friends-now panic is triggering my aggressive freshman year instinct of needing to unnecessarily introduce myself to everyone I meet, except it’s ten times harder to find these potential friends now that they’re not all concentrated in a one mile radius and don’t exactly harbor a similar burning desire for friendship.

Potential friends are like precious jewels.  When I find one, I get really excited and anxious and I try my hardest to seem cool and casual but then I fuck it up by being too direct because I don’t want them to slip away and I blurt out “we should be friends!!" and they get scared and slowly back away from my forwardness.

It’s a stressful environment to live in. 

That’s why I’ve decided to leave it all behind to travel the world.

Elaboration: I spent the past five days roadtripping with a friend to the Northwest, and now I am completely obsessed with being in places anywhere other than here.  Now I get why everyone that studies abroad won’t shut up about how great it was. 

Because travel is liberation.  In foreign cities, people will think you’re interesting by default.  No one thinks you’re weird for aggressively pursuing new friends, because everyone is on the lookout for new friends while traveling.  And you’ll probably meet the most interesting people along the way, because the most interesting people tend to seek out the most interesting experiences.

You can make fun of Canada with a British guy via South Park references, then make fun of the way he can’t say “literally”.  You can belt Alicia Keys in a deserted alley with new friends at 3AM.  You can repeatedly shout “YOU ARE SO COOL!” at a beautiful, half Indonesian neuroscience major straight female, and her reaction will be to buy you a drink (yes this happened). You can walk through a bar with your friend, identify the hottest guy, walk up to him, and explain that you want to make out with him because he’s the hottest guy AND THEN YOU DO IT.

I can’t exactly explain why these things don’t happen in real life.  I guess because we’re all so set in our ways and don’t want to be spontaneous and we’re not really looking to meet new friends because we already have some at the table with us (and there’s no room for anyone to join, sorry!).  On the other hand, travel encourages seizing of the moment.  Travel makes us bold. 

So okay, for the moment I’ll stay in Berkeley and try really hard to befriend people who aren’t looking for new friends.  I’ll go to bars alone and smile at everyone in Trader Joe’s and maybe even online date if it comes to that. 

But I’ll be saving my money so that come January, I can pack my suitcase and book my one way ticket out of here.  Because now is the time to have all the experiences we want before adulthood kills us with responsibility and husbands and fire.  Let’s go travel the planet, because it’s epic, it’s the time in our lives when we’re supposed to, and it’s also super effective against Post Grad Stress.

My Monday

After work today I decided to undergo a solitary adventure.

I went to go audition for a choir I found online by googling “recent college graduate desperate for other college graduate friends and also a non-karaoke musical outlet”. 

That’s not actually what I looked up, it’s just what I was thinking while I was looking things up.

Anyway, after my audition I had an hour to kill before choir rehearsal, so I wandered aimlessly and ended up walking into a mostly-deserted bar. 

When I came in, the manager behind the counter looked confused and asked hesitantly if I wanted food.  I said no. “Are you with that group over there?” he offered, indicating four Asians sitting in a corner.  He was really trying hard to find a logical explanation to my being there alone.  I offered none.  “No, I am by myself,” I said defiantly.  “And I want a drink.”

"Ah… really?  Um.. so I guess you want a shot or something?"  Good grief.  I hadn’t anticipated this kind of reaction.  It’s like he assumed I was seriously depressed and must want to drown my sorrows at being alone in vodka.  It was also like he was scared of catching "loner" by talking to me too freely.  (But the other dudes at the bar were by themselves too, weren’t they??  What gives? I guess loner guys are more acceptable than loner girls at bars. SMH!)

So I took upon myself the challenge of proving that one can be a socially adept female and still go to bars by oneself (without straight up saying something like, “Don’t worry, my solitary appearance is neither contagious nor malignant). We had a good, normal conversation and the manager started to relax, and he and I ended up coaching another guy there who wasn’t so socially adept on how to be more so, and we all became good friends. I departed with a merry wave, promising to come back soon for karaoke night.

After that I realized I probably shouldn’t go to my first practice smelling like Jack and Coke, so I stopped at a food mart to buy mints. I debated with the cashier on whether “wintercool” or “peppermint” was a more legitimate choice, and we eventually settled on wintercool because the packaging matched my teal scarf.  It was fun banter, but then we got into a heated argument over whether or not student government is a tool of university administration, so I left yelling over my shoulder “NO IT’S NOT”.

Once I got to Cal’s campus, I decided to check out the little signs people posted on the notice board.  This particular one grabbed my attention:

As was the case at UCLA whenever I saw one of these, I immediately got really excited.  Shit, $15 an hour to do a study??  And then I realized that I’m a working adult now and I already get paid $15 an hour (to go on tumblr… hheehe)

I feel like it’s going to take a long time for me to stop feeling like a student.

Anyway, after that really random tangent (sorry), I finally made it to rehearsal!

The ladies handing out music at the door saw I was by myself and kept referring me to a “loner’s packet” and I was getting a little annoyed, because is it really that big of a deal to come alone to the first choir practice, and then I realized they were saying “loaner’s packet.”

Then I walked into the rehearsal room and there were about a hundred and twenty people and almost everyone was seventy-something years old and retired. 

(half the reason I came was for the hot asian guy in this picture on their website, but I couldn’t find him there)

At that point, however, I was just going with the flow.  I made lots of senior citizen friends (it may have helped that I was still mildly inebriated), butchered some French and Italian lyrics, and gulped down the rest of my cool, winter mints.

Anyway, the lesson I learned today is that you can be by yourself, graduated, activityless, and friendless and still have an interesting Monday.  It’s just about aggressively pursuing an interesting Monday, ya know?  Don’t let people make you feel bad for being alone- ask those haters if they’ve tried it, because sometimes, it’s really quite fun.

Dear Internet

Dear Internet,

I’m mad at you. 

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had a great relationship these past (let’s see, I got email in 5th grade?) …twelve years.  You’ve done a lot for me.  I’m grateful to you.

But the part of you that’s classified as “social networking” has disappointed me as of late. 

You used to be so thoughtful.  You would let me write lengthy emails back and forth with people I cared about and we would pose questions, gossip, discuss our love lives, and reminisce together. 

And then you gave us Xanga, and we all got one, and even though we weren’t extremely eloquent writers at the age of 13:

Hihi peeps.  What is up with the away messages??? God like half the people on my buddy list are away.  If you’re away for more than like, an hour, DONT DO AN AWAY MESSAGE, SIGN OUT.  Ok…..got that outta my system…..lol. OKAYY so I am supposed to do HW rite now but I am procrastinating, big suprise there.  Haha Jason is coming back this weekend already!! Guess he misses home and Japanese food! Can’t live w/out it.  Maybe I’ll go to collage at UCI and live at home so my mom can cook Japanese food 4 me!  hahaha….not.   Wowo this is the longest entry I’ve had yet! coolio. ALRIGHTY hope you all are doing good, cause I am! NUMBER 3 IN GEOMETRY WHOOHOO!!!!OO… I figured out my new cell phone #…its 749-2339. I think. So call me on dat one, k?

it was still a place where we talked about our thoughts and our lives in detail.  It was a space where we were the creators and got to craft grammatically-horrendous sentences about us and our apparently extremely passionate disdain for the inappropriate use of away messages, and we tried to be thoughtful.  If we included pictures they were intended to supplement our words.

And at the same time, you gave us AOL Instant Messaging (AIM). 

This opened up a bunch of possibilities. 

When we got home from school, we could continue our conversations and our schemes to force a group of boys into becoming our guy friends and asking us to Winter Formal (long story). 

We could flirt with our crush and open chat rooms with the entire sixth grade class and collectively wonder if the teacher really didn’t notice that we were shooting staples at her during that whole volcano lesson. 

AIM was awesome, and we had many quality conversations on it.

And then, you offered us MySpace and shortly after, Facebook. 

We added our best friends and had moments of confusion/anxiety when you expected us to rank them from best to last resort. 

We didn’t really get the point of Facebook “statuses” (Kelly Osajima is: wondering what to write here) , so we mostly ignored them and instead wrote on our friends’ “walls” and carried out “wall-to-wall” conversations.

We browsed for an hour or so, then we shut you off and went back to whatever it is high school students do (failing AP Chem in my case…although my teacher pitied me and my balancing-equations-disability so much that she ended up letting me scrape by with a C-).

I like to think that we had a healthy relationship, Internet- we had some quality engagement, but knew when to put space between us. 

But now, I don’t really know what’s happened to you. 

You replaced Xanga with Tumblr, and instead of writing about their thoughts and their lives in detail, people “reblog” attractive pictures and stuff that other people said, and it’s not a journal at all as much as a confusing jumble of funny memes created by others and inspirational quotes said by others. 

It’s annoying, because I go to my friends’ blogs hoping to hear about them, not about random strangers.

I DO AND NO ONE CARES

And that’s kind of what you did to Facebook as well. 

It’s no longer really a place to communicate with specific people as much as a void where we throw out twenty thousand separate insignificant things like instagram pictures of our food, and what movies we’re about to watch, and how we don’t like the current weather, to no one in particular just all 2500 of our “friends” who are all doing the same thing and consequently it’s stupid and incredibly overwhelming. 

And I get why people like it- you play up our narcissism.  We enjoy posting these statuses because when 50 people “like” it, it translates to “50 people think you’re awesome!” in our heads that so often need reassuring that we are as loved as we hope we are. 

And we devote much more time than we should to looking at all fifty million of these stupid posts because you made it addicting, and does any of it really impact us or help us grow?

I dont care about your hamburger. And I apologize if I offended the random person I took this from.

And of course, when you came around to introducing Twitter I lost what little respect I had left for you.  How are we supposed to type something meaningful in 140 characters?

I’m sorry for getting emotional.  

The point is, Internet, I’m upset at what you’ve turned us into.  Passive spectators when we used to be thoughtful creators.  Sometimes I feel like a zombie, mindlessly scrolling through newsfeed and not really benefiting from any of it.  And when we do create, it’s an Instagrammed photo, it’s 140 characters.  How many people write blog posts nowadays as long as this one? Not a lot because it just isn’t normal anymore.  And we’re not used to putting in the time anymore.

In retrospect, I guess it isn’t really, entirely your fault.  Sure, you provided the forum, but I guess we’re the ones that used it the way we do now.  So I guess what I really want to say is this:

Dear People on the Internet (including myself),

We’re constantly plugged into our social network sites, we’re constantly updating each other, but it’s an overload of unnecessary information.  We need to decrease the massive quantities of what we choose to put up and increase the quality of what we’re saying.   And we need to remember what we used to use social networking for- as a meaningful supplement to our relationships - and maybe try to get back to that a little.

And when you get a cool looking burger at dinner with your friends, maybe instead of giving in to your first instinct of “Wow, I gotta get a picture of this then instagram it, then put it on Facebook so everyone else can “like” it!”, maybe you could just enjoy the food, leave your smartphone in your pocket, and focus your full attention on the people sitting there with you.  And if something crazy happens at dinner, laugh about it and turn it into a great story to tell people later on.  Or, you could always blog about it. (;

Love, Kelly

Why Yes, I Would Love to Plant Squashes With You

I don’t think I’m very good at finding roommates on Craigslist. 

As of right now, my options are a 35 year old guy who is trying to find a squash partner (I was so confused by this. At first I thought it was slang for “casual mid-thirties sex” and then I considered that he might literally be seeking a companion to plant squash into a garden with, and then I looked it up and realized squash is a sport), and a Cal student who says she will forbid me from drinking alcohol. 

I’m probably not going about this the right way:

About the space:
- you will be living with a female UC Berkeley student
- you are free to set up a divider for your own privacy in the living room
- no parties, drugs, alcohol, 420, etc.

I also mentioned in my first email to another Craigslist ad that JK Rowling has informed me that I’m a Ravenclaw.  Still learning the concept of "relevant information".

And then I found some Craigslist ads that seemed like they were written by really cool people, but since their apartment was too far/year lease only, I emailed them just to tell them I can’t live with them, but they sound like they’d be really chill to live with.

I don’t know what I’m doing… I’m sorry… I’m trying as hard as I can!  Please, please please let me find someone tolerant enough of my faults to take me in in this hard time…. I promise I’ll sing for you and I’ll even plant squashes in the garden whenever you want.

I Did Not Tweet These Things Either

I told myself today is the day I’m going to get out of my bed and off my computer and go running.  I put on a sports bra and workout clothes and I realized I was hungry so I heated up thai food, and now it’s been 3 hours and I’m laying in my bed on my computer in workout clothes.  Is this what they meant when they said it’s okay to take baby steps to exercise?

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Human nature is a weird, complex thing.  We want to be different from everybody else and fit in at the same time.  How the hell do we do that?

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Among the most satisfying of feelings is the triumph experienced when you finally caught Abra in Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow/Gold(?)/Silver(?).

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How does Simba manage to be so sexy? He’s a cartoon lion.

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Dear tongue, you are one resilient motherfucking body part.  I burn you horribly with a scalding hot drink and then you hurt and then you are better in like, a day, so I do it again and you burn and heal again with no repercussions that are visible at least.  You’re a badass, so I guess thanks.

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I strongly feel that people on the Internet take themselves too seriously.

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There has also been a loud concert fundraiser in the parking lot right outside my apartment since 10AM and at first I thought it was overwhelmingly intrusive and then I tried dancing in front of the mirror to the music and at least agreed with myself that this kind of thing is unique and definitely wouldn’t happen in Yorba Linda.  Then then MC said there are rootbeer floats for $1 and I peeked through my window blinds to see if it was really true but the window is so close to the parking lot that everyone saw me and I felt like the intrusive one.

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Actually Dimitri from Anastasia is probably sexier than Simba, and I think that’s okay because he’s still a cartoon, but he’s a cartoon person.

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I just want the human equivalent of Dimitri from Anastasia, is that too much to ask?  Flynn Rider from Tangled would also work.

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News radio in the car in the morning feels like a serrated knife cutting through my brain again and again. 

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So does this concert music outside my apartment, the performers are getting steadily worse and worse throughout the day and after they perform they try to give everyone life inspiration to achieve their dreams but telling me to not be afraid to achieve my dreams is something that hasn’t really helped me.  I’m also skeptical of the validity of their advice because have they even achieved their own dreams yet (they are still performing in a parking lot outside my apartment).

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I want to go to space before I die.  Can the Make a Wish Foundation hook something like that up?

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Twenties are terrifying.  We are terrified of the lack of structure it offers us because we are so used to structure.  I will soon write a blog post about this.

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I think I’m best-friend traumatized. 

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Stop posting pictures of food on facebook.  Also what movies you’re about to watch and second-by-second updates of your day.  Everyone should try to contribute to the internet in a unique way.

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I’m now developing an irresistible urge to run outside, grab the microphone, sing the first line of Alicia Keys’ “Fallin’” (Iiii keep on fallin’, iiii-i-i-in-nnnn-nnn and out of love”) and then run away.  I have slaved over that riff for days and I need to test it somewhere.

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There is no good way to end this post, so here is a pixelated image of a goat brought to you by the Spanish Goat Association.

I can’t figure out if this organization is real or not but after doing some research it appears that the Spanish Goat Association isn’t fucking around.  They are dead serious about their mission to “preserve the Spanish goat gene pool by increasing the availability of Spanish goats and by educating goat breeders of the benefits of raising Spanish goats. We also provide a forum for contact with Spanish goat breeders.”

I guess we all find our niche in the world.

The Ladder to Adulthood

If you’ve recently graduated college like I have, you probably know that society now considers you and I official adults.  Congratulations! 

"But I don’t feel like an adult," you protest. 

It doesn’t matter. You are now independent, so you are an adult.  Good luck with being successful!

…..But you and I both know that it doesn’t really work that way.  We know we’re secretly nowhere near ready to be real adults even though we’re supposed to be.

And I’m here to tell you that that’s okay!  Because everyone has it wrong.  Adulthood isn’t something you can just morph into the instant you graduate.  Adulthood is a slow process.  I like to think of it as a ladder.  Every new rung you reach puts you a little bit closer to adulthood, but there are lots of rungs, and it takes a long time to climb to the top, especially if you are out of shape like me.  You’re not a real adult until I say so, and that’s not for a long time.  So embark with me on the ladder to adulthood and I’ll show you the rungs I’ve climbed and those I still have yet to conquer.

The Ladder to Adulthood

-Moving away to college and living in a dorm, taking responsibility for decorating your dorm room (but still relying on a dining hall meal plan for sustenance) ✓

^ not an adult

-Getting a “grown-up” email address (this was probably for the best, but it was nonetheless pretty hard to let go of basketballgurl712@yahoo.com) ✓

-Taking responsibility for your plant (although I guess the responsibilities associated with taking care of my plant do not stretch far.  Especially because when the lady at Home Depot asked what kind of plant I wanted, I requested “the one that is most impossible to kill”.  I think I watered it once a quarter) ✓

-Graduating to an off-campus apartment ✓

-Calling Triple A to fix your car when it breaks down ✓ (um, triple A? there’s something wrong with my car. …oh, it’s not, like, turning on? and there’s a little red light that is on when usually it isn’t. …i hope that’s enough information.)

-“Cooking” your own food (this still mostly consists of deli meat, yogurt, pita bread (sometimes toasted), and frozen blueberries) ✓

-Graduating college ✓

————————————————at this point, most people would inform you that you have now turned into an adult. but we know better.  we still have a long-ass way to go. ——————————————-

-Moving to Norcal and getting a temporary job/fellowship ✓

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-Paying your own rent ✓

-Going to a bar after your job with co-workers, some of whom are in their30’s  ✓ (this one made me feel really fucking grown-up. there is something wonderfully sophisticated about casually ordering drinks in real glasses and not plastic cups at 5PM in business attire.  Actually, that reminds me of the alcohol ladder to adulthood, which is an entirely other thing.  I haven’t worked that one out yet, but the lowest rung would be smirnoff vodka in water bottles in the backseat of your friend’s car in the parking garage of an 18 and older club and the highest one would be $12 martinis/plain scotch with ice at a deserted hotel bar.  Martinis/plain scotch with ice are the drink of successful people.  I told this to the 50-something year old Greenlining board member who ordered it yesterday, but he failed to see the humor in it.  I guess he is so successful, he is now completely removed from immature young-not-yet-successful-people humor.  Or humor itself, which I guess you could say isn’t really necessary for adulthood.  Adults are all about efficiency.

By the way, martinis taste like paint thinner and disgust. I am convinced that adults only order them to keep up their sophisticated image and reassure those around them of their unwavering maturity.

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-Paying for your own speeding tickets (this wasn’t as confusing as I had anticipated, although I experienced some anxiety figuring out the right address to mail it to) ✓

——THIS IS WHERE I AM. Now, for the stuff I haven’t done yet——

-Getting a REAL job

-Cooking REAL meals

-Showering every day (this one will be a struggle. I have an aversion to showering)

-Paying motherfucking TAXES and INSURANCE (I dread the day this happens. I literally break out in a cold sweat and hyperventilate at the thought of it.  If you’re one of those advanced-placement adults and are already doing this, shut up and be understanding)

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-Getting a HOUSE with ADVANCED KITCHEN APPLIANCES and a HUSBAND

-Fighting over the check at dinner (ooh boy, is this one a long way off for ALL of us)

-Reading books for pleasure that are not Harry Potter or Animorphs

-Getting a child and taking responsibility for its well-being (it’s hard enough trying to make sure I don’t die of starvation and/or failure, can you imagine trying to keep kids alive in addition??? this probably will not happen for the next twenty years)

^ final adult stage

So rest assured, it’s okay that you’re not a real adult yet.  We have a very long time before we get to the top rung and have to burden the responsibility of being fully responsible.  And it’s also okay if you’re reading this and thinking, “Wow, but I shower every day and file taxes and I’m looking into investing in a juice maker…” That’s fine too; just like puberty, we all go through this ladder at different rates.You just get to be the one whose skin cleared up the fastest/period came the soonest of all your friends, you lucky, successful person, you. 

But to the rest of us, let’s not fret, because adulthood isn’t something we need to get right away.  If we want to read Harry Potter instead of Crime and Punishment (I got that by googling “Sophisticated book examples”) and if we still consume water-bottle vodka in parking garages instead of martinis at fancy unaffordable places all the more fucking power to us.Me, I’m gonna take my time going up the ladder. No one’s gonna bully me into growing up!