The Diary of Ashley Spencer: The Fear and Loathing in Chicago

This is sort of embarrassing for me to admit. I’m suffering from what seems like an incurable disease common among recent college graduates. No, it’s not some nasty germy thing I picked up just by walking past a frat party my last semester of school. It’s something far worse. And it burns.

I have self-diagnosed myself with The Fear.

The Fear is something no one really talks about. Yet people across the nation silently suffer from this affliction.

Before you catch The Fear, everything seems semi-okay. You apply for jobs as a nanny, semi-clothed waitress, or cashier at a hardware store. You say it’s only temporary, until you figure it out. For a while, things are OK. You are hopeful. You are earning money. You can afford interview outfits for the future. You are distracted by the guys you meet on weekends, the movies you watch in your matching pajamas, the small happenings of your inner world. But then you catch it when you least expect it. The Fear. Suddenly, the days seem even longer at the job you never really wanted anyway. You don’t know where your life is going, but you know it's not going in the direction you planned.

People deal with the “The Fear” differently. Some grab The Fear by the horns and own that beast. Take Julie from "Julie & Julia"; she's a writer who gives up on her literary dreams and then decides to blog Julia Child’s recipes. Just one year later, she totally lands a book deal, a movie deal, and all the inner happiness in the world! Other people are consumed by The Fear, paralyzed with the inability to change the course of their lives. Their symptoms include: No desire to wake up in the morning, self-doubt, decrease in brain waves, increased interest in napping, and self-medication with complex carbohydrates. One day, they wake up and realize their good looks have suddenly faded (and their bodies have expanded quite extensively thanks to their nacho-pasta-burrito-based diet). They are still working a job that isn’t for them, a job that makes them want to go all Office Space on their fax machine. They might have children, or be pregnant. They feel a deep yearning for youth. They think of missed opportunities ("Maybe I should have quit my job and been a waitress in a comedy club," or something safer, like "Maybe I should have quit my job and really focused my energy on my lifelong dream of making it as a lingerie model/high-powered intellectual property lawyer").

After graduating from college 218 days ago (not that I’m counting or anything), my six month plan didn't fall into place. I wasn’t where I wanted to be, and I didn’t feel like I was getting any closer to (and I use this term somewhat sarcastically) “my destiny." For the past few weeks, I've had a people-my-life-is-in-shambles-I-want-to-sleep-and-die attitude. I just haven’t been myself. Instead of telling my parents “good morning” when they woke up, I’d tell them to get out of my face and make me coffee. I stopped writing anything besides this blog. I ate more, stuffing chips into my mouth, even though I wasn’t consciously aware of what I was doing, because I was just so far out of it. I watched a lot of Lifetime original movies and envied the circumstances of the women who killed their husbands.

After weeks of being the grossest robe-wearing piece of half-alive mess ever, I decided it was time to kill The Fear before it transformed me into a 455-pound housewife with an unhealthy obsession for dating shows, the Game Show Network, and infomercials.

So I made a change. I set up on office in my basement for writing and job applying. I talked to my current boss in a way that was open, honest, and mature—something I didn’t even know I was capable of doing—and will be leaving in a month on good terms. Not everyone, including my own grandmother, thinks I am making the right decision. And there are no guarentees I’ll become all “Julie & Julia,” since I have yet to write my own insanely famous, ingenious blog that gets turned into a book and then a movie. But I have to try and find my zen, and I feel like I’m heading into the right direction and facing The Fear head on. And to shake up my salsa-and-chips habit, I’m planning to start a body cleanse on Monday. You’d think the hard part would be living on a weird combination of fruits and shakes, but it’s more the fact that there will be no drinking caffeine for ten days. And while I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit scared, let The Fear bring it.

Related post: The Diary of Ashley Spencer: Adventures in Babysitting and Abuse

Photo credit: Tom Carmony