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Sunday, January 10, 2010

The Challenge


My friend, Andrew, and I got to talking about milestones.

As you grow up, it seems like the milestones are endless. Going to high school. Getting your driver's license. Moving away from home. Starting college. Renting your first apartment. Graduating from school. Starting your first job. Becoming a functional human being in the real world.

These are all milestones that I've already experienced. I'm a recent college graduate working as a teacher in New York City, and in the past couple of years, I've accomplished a lot. All my life, I've worked towards one milestone after the next, and as I talked about these milestones with Andrew, it occurred to me: the next milestone in my life is getting married.



I am NOWHERE near getting married. Nor do I want to be.

I guess the reason we thought this was the next milestone is because all the others on our list are sort of written out for most people. It's not like I woke up and this list organically came out of me--I think it's assumed that at some point in a young person's life, they will go to school, move away from home, and start a career. Maybe that doesn't happen for everyone, but I think most people assume that their lives will involve most, if not all, of these major events. But then there's this huge gap between starting a life and starting a life with someone else where there aren't any huge milestones. There's really nothing that society is telling me I should be accomplishing or looking forward to than marriage and children, and at 22, that scares the hell out of me.

I suppose I've started this blog as a way around that. My college roommate, Aiva, was always a huge fan of creating challenges for yourself, and I'm creating this challenge for myself: cook twenty recipes from a list of twenty ingredients.

I'm sure that sounds sort of trivial, but I'm also sure that many twenty-somethings living on their own can identify both with not having much money for groceries and buying ingredients for a super cool recipe, and then having a crapton of some ingredient that they can't use for another recipe. I don't know. Maybe this is just me.

This might sound like a silly 'milestone,' but I think one of the reasons I've been so lost in my twenty-something haze is because I haven't had anything that I'm working towards. Obviously, I want to explore New York and be a good teacher, but those aren't quite as tangible as some of the other milestones I've achieved. When have I finished exploring the city? When have I become a good teacher? I need to have milestones that are conquerable, and I hope that this blog will reflect the many challenges that I hope to overcome.

2 comments:

Eva said...

Looks yummy! You're making me hungry!

Annie said...

Awesome idea! I basically always have those ingredients, but never think to put them together in those ways. Keep them coming...I'm a fan already!

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