Life after College — Or, The time I decided to pretend that my loans didn’t exist and what it taught me
This was written originally as a response to a friend’s letter discussing the challenges of life after graduate school, but the beginning has been edited in order to keep the contents of the conversation private.
When I first started working, money was admittedly one of my primary motivators. Making a good salary, making “real” money, being able to put some money towards my loans and still have some saved away, was what I had thought I always wanted. In reality however, I was coming home each day feeling empty and lost. While putting several thousand dollars at a time into my loans was a good feeling, the number I still owed was not going down nearly at the pace that I wanted it to. I would do the math, and begin to question whether I would ever be able to pay off my loans. A dream I carried for so long was shattering before my eyes. I may never be debt free — I will always be a slave to the system. Suddenly I felt like I needed “more”; I began to feel panicked, like I was running across a bridge that was crumbling with every step I took, and I was desperately trying to stay one step ahead. Rather than doubling down, getting more frugal, and putting more money towards my loans however, I did the opposite. I acted as if my loans didn’t exist.
For two months I did not make a single loan payment. I took advantage of living rent-free, and I saw money accumulate in my account faster than I could spend it. I ate out regularly, bought myself a new laptop, booked my first vacation, and still saw a surplus in my account every-other-week. Money was no longer a factor, but I still did not feel happy or satisfied in the way that I had thought I would. This short-term experiment forcefully reinforced the fact that our happiness is not tied to money or material goods.
We can’t avoid our dependency on money. We live in a world in need of a common currency to ascribe a common value across material (and intellectual) goods and services. What we have control over in this environment is how, and on what, we choose to spend our money. We want to be able to pay our rent, and support our lifestyle of choice without having to look at our bank statement every day to see what we can afford. We want to spend our money in a way that makes us feel connected, grounded, and in control. We want to support organizations that represent our values, we want experiences that make us feel fulfilled from the inside out. We don’t want to feel guilty at the end of each month when we comb through our credit card history and see superfluous purchases that left us feeling as shallow after they were made as we felt before we made them. It’s impossible to enjoy what you do every day if you live that way. Getting caught in the latter way of thinking was the primary reason that I went through a months-long stretch strongly disliking my job. I genuinely find the work that I do meaningful. I honestly believe that I am adding value to the world each and every day by showing up to work, and yet the shift of focus to finances ruined my ability to stay aligned in this way.
Finances, in addition to being a necessary evil with regards to sustaining ourselves, also show up in a more subtle way; as a representation of our own expectations of what our experience is supposed to be like in various stages of our lives. Making, or not making, money is proportionally associated with our sense of meaning, purpose, and direction in life. But this is a narrowly-focused view, as meaning, purpose, and direction in this way of thinking are often measured by job status, upward mobility, fancy cocktails, and bourgeois one bedroom apartments. In stages of uncertainty, this expectation becomes amplified; we feel we are stuck having to choose between the money or the freedom to flop around and accept how little certainty we feel about the direction our lives have taken. Is there a way to do both? Why does money, when introduced, have such a toxic effect on the activity we are engaging in? Why does being paid inhibit our ability to connect to what is inherently good about the experience? To the things we enjoy that drew us to it in the first place?
A few months removed from this experiment I find myself in a better place. I chip away at my loans, dutifully making payments that are slightly above my minimum, and well within my means. I actively make sure that I no longer count the number of hours I spent at work, or calculate the discrepancy between what I bring in for this business and what I take home. I still have lofty aspirations for myself, but I feel OK with letting myself be here for a little while. In CrossFit, and now at work, I am learning the value of consistency; the value of stringing together correct decisions, of showing up and putting in consistent effort day after day after day, and of the results and lessons that follow.
I firmly believe that there is no pursuit in the world that anyone can love unconditionally. I don’t believe that finding that “thing” is the key to figuring out who we are. Life is far more complex than finding what we “love” to do. That’s society’s myths talking. There will be days where you hate what you do. There will be days when you don’t want to go to work. There will be days when you are overwhelmed by your loans, when you feel dwarfed by the vastness of experiences you are missing because you are working, and when you want to run away. Life is messy. Life is uncertain. Life is a struggle. In our 20’s, we are not supposed to have it figured out. We sit and we wait for permission to accept the messiness of our lives, we sit and wait for someone to tell us it’s ok to flop around. But of course that can only come from one place; from ourselves.
