(no subject)
Wed, Oct. 20th, 2004 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterOne of the strange things that's happened because of my taking up LJ around the same time I graduated from college is that I feel so inexperienced now. When I was a kid, or in high school, or in college, I always had this view of myself as being very mature, as though I understood the world. I felt wise and knowledgeable. And while I felt like I would be learning things about life all the time, my own self impression was that of age.
Now it's completely different, probably because of the change of environment. It sort of started with LJ and getting to know people of different generations as friends, not as "friends of my mom" or some such thing. I think in school it's so easy to exaggerate that one year difference between juniors and seniors, or the three year difference between freshmen and seniors. It feels like an unbreachable gap (especially for dating purposes). I mean, back then, I would think of people two years younger than me as "my sister's friends." Now they would probably be the closest people to my age that I've interacted with in a while (in RL). Also, back in high school, I always knew more people in the classes below me than above. Plus, I am a big sister, and as such, have often felt older and wiser (yes, that sound you hear would be my sister choking back laughter).
In college things were a little different -- I got to know the classes above me more, and as such, was sort of the baby of the group for a bit. Not me, per se, but I was the little soph playing with the juniors or something like that. In LJ, things feel even more like that. Possibly for the first time in my life, I got to talk to people who have been reading genre for longer than me, people who have a much better understanding of the sci-fi/fantasy tradition and canon and etc. I never had this sort of community in high school, because we were all discovering the same books at roughly the same time. That was wonderful too, in its own way, just as it's wonderful to show up here and say, "I like such, such and such" and have recs pour in.
I think another big factor is work. Obviously, since I am a recent grad, most people are work are older than me. The people at the bookstore were split between a generation a little older than my parents, and then a few people around my age (give or take ten years). The people at work now are, I think, about ten years older than me, and everyone is talking about not even marriage (which is still a scary thing for me to think about), but having kids and raising kids and kids blah blah. I sort of eye them and my brain goes into panic mode when all this is mentioned. And because it's work, I have to act as though people much older than me are my peers, which is very, very disconcerting. It took me a very long while getting used to calling people older than me by their first names instead of Mr./Ms. So-and-so or Blah ahyi/shushu (auntie/uncle). It still feels extremely unpolite to address emails by first name to people higher up on the corporate ladder.
And so now I feel like I'm just really starting to crawl around in the world and only beginning to get a grasp on things. I feel very displaced and lost also. I can't quite figure out (still) where my life is going, despite the new job, or what the meaning of it all is, or anything. And it's especially odd and frightening watching my parents grow older and worry more about health issues. Mortality seems much closer now than it did when I was in school.
Of course, I will reread this a year or five years, or many more years down the line and shake my head at just how little I know.
Now it's completely different, probably because of the change of environment. It sort of started with LJ and getting to know people of different generations as friends, not as "friends of my mom" or some such thing. I think in school it's so easy to exaggerate that one year difference between juniors and seniors, or the three year difference between freshmen and seniors. It feels like an unbreachable gap (especially for dating purposes). I mean, back then, I would think of people two years younger than me as "my sister's friends." Now they would probably be the closest people to my age that I've interacted with in a while (in RL). Also, back in high school, I always knew more people in the classes below me than above. Plus, I am a big sister, and as such, have often felt older and wiser (yes, that sound you hear would be my sister choking back laughter).
In college things were a little different -- I got to know the classes above me more, and as such, was sort of the baby of the group for a bit. Not me, per se, but I was the little soph playing with the juniors or something like that. In LJ, things feel even more like that. Possibly for the first time in my life, I got to talk to people who have been reading genre for longer than me, people who have a much better understanding of the sci-fi/fantasy tradition and canon and etc. I never had this sort of community in high school, because we were all discovering the same books at roughly the same time. That was wonderful too, in its own way, just as it's wonderful to show up here and say, "I like such, such and such" and have recs pour in.
I think another big factor is work. Obviously, since I am a recent grad, most people are work are older than me. The people at the bookstore were split between a generation a little older than my parents, and then a few people around my age (give or take ten years). The people at work now are, I think, about ten years older than me, and everyone is talking about not even marriage (which is still a scary thing for me to think about), but having kids and raising kids and kids blah blah. I sort of eye them and my brain goes into panic mode when all this is mentioned. And because it's work, I have to act as though people much older than me are my peers, which is very, very disconcerting. It took me a very long while getting used to calling people older than me by their first names instead of Mr./Ms. So-and-so or Blah ahyi/shushu (auntie/uncle). It still feels extremely unpolite to address emails by first name to people higher up on the corporate ladder.
And so now I feel like I'm just really starting to crawl around in the world and only beginning to get a grasp on things. I feel very displaced and lost also. I can't quite figure out (still) where my life is going, despite the new job, or what the meaning of it all is, or anything. And it's especially odd and frightening watching my parents grow older and worry more about health issues. Mortality seems much closer now than it did when I was in school.
Of course, I will reread this a year or five years, or many more years down the line and shake my head at just how little I know.
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(no subject)
Thu, Oct. 21st, 2004 06:38 am (UTC)Now, she had this sister-in-law who was ten years older, and as the years went by, she kept lopping years off the age she'd admit to, until at the end, she was claiming to be ten years younger than my grandmother. Which would have been fine, but my grandmother, exasperated by her all their lives, ended up having to be her caretaker, and when dealing with doctors, thought it downright ridiculous when Aunt Harriette coyly claimed to be just over eighty when she was in fact in her mid nineties.
But as I get older I can see that inside, Aunt Harriett still felt young and flirtatious and hoped to be attractive to someone...I don't feel like a fifty-something old bat, I can still be my ten year old self, my teen self, my twenty-something self, my thirty and forty self--in fact I am ageless, only my bod is not.
And like the others, I love LiveJournal for the variety of people it brings--ages, gender, and people from all over the world.
(no subject)
Thu, Oct. 21st, 2004 05:19 pm (UTC)I think it's funny, and I used to mock my mom mercilessly for dying her hair and such, but I guess she must miss the way she used to look when she goes through old photographs and the like.
Am a total LJ addict, like everyone else here ;). Still completely enamoured with how many different people I've met via LJ.
(no subject)
Thu, Oct. 21st, 2004 05:36 pm (UTC)I might have to give up the other, the one I love best, the one I promised myself 25 years ago I'd wear if I ever had anything to celebrate in a big way. (Or maybe I'll just wear it in private.) But these gowns were designed for the young, and though they look beautiful to my eyes, full of grace, my daughter says that Gunny Saxe and Jessica gowns are totally dorky seventies--and old bats should NOT wear them in publick. Alas, alas!
(no subject)
Thu, Oct. 21st, 2004 06:30 pm (UTC)I think one should wear whatever one wants in public, despite embarrassment to one's immediate family ;).
My mom once dragged out her old college clothes and my immediate impressions were: 1) OMG my mom was so skinny! and 2) Hee! Seventies! Disco clothes! It was really cool though, and I wanted to wear them and be sort of retro, but alas, my mom back then was way skinnier than me.