Tag: thoughtpiece

What Have We Learned

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2018 has quite literally felt like one of the longest years of my life. I’ve probably said that in some form every year for the last 3 years at least, but this one was particularly chaotic and thus felt like an eternity. But what have we learned? It’s been such a transitional year for me that it feels like I’ve lived three separate lives this year. And through it all, I’ve picked up a number of life lessons I thought I’d share.

I started the year as a senior in college interning at a fashion magazine. I was more broke than I had ever been in my life, but enjoying my final semester of college. Then I spent the summer interning at The Daily Beast, which was kind of like big-girl-job purgatory. Not because it was a bad experience, but because I had entered into adulthood in terms of working a 9-5 job and being out of school, but it wasn’t permanent, and I still went in every day with what felt like a sign on my back that said “intern.” And not because I was treated as such there, more just because I knew the whole time it was temporary and I spent a lot of time applying to other jobs and worried about what would happen when the internship was over. And now here I am finishing out the year as a full-time employee at LendingTree, enjoying the full benefits of paid time off, health insurance (granted, I’ve yet to actually utilize either of these literal benefits), and a level of job security I did not know before.

One taught me love, one taught me patience, and one taught me pain…I type that in jest, but that lyric really could be used to describe the different roles I went through this year. My glitzy fashion internship was more or less a bust. I threw so much money at the MTA just trying to make it a worthwhile experience, and at the end of the day, it wasn’t. I don’t regret doing it—I did learn what it’s like to work at a fashion magazine (yawn), and that some celebrities who will not be named give excruciatingly boring interviews. I can’t say for certain that the gig at ELLE allowed me to pursue my next endeavor, but I have to acknowledge that it didn’t detract me from my trajectory. I went into my next stint at The Daily Beast with the feeling that I had a minuscule amount of journalism experience.

My time at The Daily Beast did a few things for me. It made me love the news a little bit more and hate the news a little bit more. Part of that was just the timing, I mean I don’t know if there’s a news cycle that anyone really wants, but the one I worked with this summer was absolutely not it. It tapped into levels of empathy I didn’t know I had while exposing me to a vast list of things I do not understand. It challenged me to learn more while drawing on my education. In terms of hard job skills, I picked up a couple at The Beast, but I learned a lot more about myself that I’ll get into in a moment.

And here I am now just over a month into my new job at LendingTree. I won’t say more than I can about what the experience has been, but it has been positive. The corporate world is insane and I’m not sure I love that aspect of it, but my office is homely and my team has been incredibly welcoming. I have the satisfaction of knowing I’m where I’m meant to be right now.

So what have we learned?

Probably the biggest lesson I’ve taken out of this year is knowing when to be selfish, and doing it. I spent way too much time this year in my professional and personal life waiting for someone else to make a decision for me, or tell me what I want, when I absolutely could have and should have taken the reins. I always thought I was a selfish person until it was important for my well-being that I be selfish. It was hard (because I’m obviously super selfless). But I had to take a good look in the mirror (and get yelled at by my mom) to say, “Kamaron, you should be doing better.” Which brings me to my next lesson.

Patience is not just a virtue, it is the virtue. Each of the jobs I had along with just being a person this year was a constant reminder to have patience. But with that, I also had to give myself a kick sometimes and say I’m not going to sit around waiting for this or that. I did and you do at some point need to say “Here’s what I can do to change this,” and then do it. There will always be factors you can’t change, but the ones you should change aren’t going to change themselves. Sorry to get preachy, but that was experience I really went through in my job search. Patience kept me a little bit sane when I sent out dozens of job applications that would get no response. Patience kept me from committing a crime when I would hear back from a job 5 months later letting me know I’d been rejected. But I also changed my resume or my search approach probably ten times throughout my process. I refused to give up half because I literally couldn’t, and half because I knew something good would come out of it.

One lesson The Daily Beast did reinforce for me was to have the confidence to speak up. I consider myself an outgoing person, but I am deathly shy especially when I know I’m in no position of authority. My defaults to thinking no one wants to hear my ideas because I’m just the intern or I’m just the assistant, or I’m just Kamaron…and I do regret the amount of time I spent at The Daily Beast not sharing my thoughts. It really just took my supervisor saying, “You should speak up more,” for me to be like “Oh they want my input.” Realistically I should have had the confidence all along to know they hired me for a reason and that I was a voice they wanted at the table, but it took a push for me to actually speak up. By the end of my time, my supervisor was applauding my ideas because some of them were actually good.

The final major lesson I’m taking away from 2018 is the greatest of all that I have now just ruined by tying it to a played-out cliché. Yeah it’s love. Wow, did Kamaron grow a heart in 2018? Kind of! I didn’t need to learn how to love, but I did start paying extra close attention to the way I show my love. Through all of the ups and downs of the year, I clung so tightly to the people in my life who make it all worth it. I went through a period in the year where I felt like I was being a really bad friend because I knew I didn’t show love the way my friends did for me. In some ways, I literally couldn’t—like when some of my friends show me love by paying for me to come out with them when I can’t afford to. But there were plenty of other ways other friends would show me love that I didn’t reciprocate for no reason.

I had friends on campus who without fail whenever I saw them, would offer to be there for me if I needed help with anything. Friends who consistently complimented my outfits or pictures online and in person. Little things that would make me smile or make my whole day, but I wasn’t doing for them—with no excuse. So I decided I needed to make an effort to show the people I love that I love them in whatever ways I could, just because I could. The real lesson here was realizing, these people weren’t doing these things for me because they had to, or for any ulterior motive. They just wanted to let me know that they love me and care about me, and I learned it is so special and important to let people know you love them in this way. Just in your every day interactions. It sounds kind of stupid now that I’ve written it down and I do feel like the Grinch character here who had to learn basic human affection, but progress is progress!

That was my 2018. I lived, I learned, I loved. Came, saw, and conquered. The what’s next question is big and open-ended for me right now, but that’s a good thing.

Happy Holidays, and a very Happy New Year

xoxo,

Kam

Right on Time

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Hello—is it me you’re looking for?

It has been way too long, and I apologize for my absence. Junior spring kicked my butt, and this is going to be both a life update and thought piece on coming of age, because that’s all I think about these days. I am preparing to enter my final year of college and therefore doing a bit of panicking about my future. I am excited to earn my degree and go out into the big bad world and show it what Kamaron McNair is made of, but that comes with this intense anxiety that the big bad world is going to reject anything that Kamaron McNair has to offer. I have expressed this anxiety to a few of my mentors and they all say the same thing—I’m right on time.

This is apparently the moment in my life and all of our lives where we do this panicking and feel like “Oh my God what am I going to do with the rest of my life because it starts tomorrow and I’m not prepared and I’ve spent 16 years in school and haven’t learned a thing and why does everyone keep posting these articles about how my generation is so miserable and we can’t buy houses or diamonds and we ruin everything and I’m going to ruin everything and the world is a mess and I want to fix it but I’m broke and have no connections and I got the wrong degree and and and and and…”

Here we are. Right on time.

I am frustrated because you all know that I don’t want to be put in a group with another person, much less the whole of humanity with this idea that everyone does this panic dance at the same time and I’m not special. I know. No one is telling me I’m not special, they’re just looking out for me and telling me that it’s okay to not know but here’s why I am special and why this panic has thrown me into a whirlwind whereas it seems most of my peers are just casually panicking. This year was incredibly difficult for me emotionally. I try not to get too personal on here (a website named after me), but I’m going to because I’ve reached an important milestone and there was little to no cake involved.

I got my heartbroken this year, romantically. I add that qualifier because I’ve been heartbroken before. My dad died, after all. I didn’t get into the college I set my heart on. I’ve been hurt before. But I had never been hurt by someone who I adored in this way, and I want to apologize here to every woman I have discounted for grieving romantic relationships. That’s a lesson that I needed to learn firsthand, and now I am glad that I have learned it because I have even written about it on here before. Grief is not a spectrum, it’s a scatter plot. There are different kinds of grief and measuring by comparison is not helpful to anyone, so I’m sorry.

I’m writing about this now even though it happened a few months back and I am just about completely over it because it really did rock me to my core in a scary way, but it taught me a lot about myself. The boy was not worth my time or my heartache, but that’s not something we can help. I was attached, and he was not. A telling scene from our short-lived relationship was a time I was saying a lot of funny things (as I do) and he said that we should get a TV show because we were so funny together. It’s kind of a stupid example, but a perfect one that showed he used me to make himself look better.

I did a lot of self blame after the end of the relationship because I knew that he was going to hurt me. The entire time we were involved I was afraid of it happening. He hurt me a lot of little times, and then the kicker at the end was completely predictable, but I was the greater fool. But, I learned (in therapy) that none of that was my fault. Even if I knew he was a bad person it was not my job or anyone’s to make him a good person. I gnashed my teeth and tore my clothes because I felt like I let this thing happen to me, but my therapist really reminded me that in general, we don’t let bad people do bad things to us. They just do them because they’re bad people.

The next lesson came this summer when I was admittedly still stewing a bit about how this boy wrecked me for a little bit and ruined a lot of things that should have otherwise been a great time for me. Lorde release an incredible album this summer, Melodrama, and she wrote a song called “Writer in the Dark,” which is about her breakup. The song is kind of ruthless in its beauty because she’s saying “You hurt me, and I’m going to write a song about it and it’s going to be huge because I’m Lorde and you’re not” (very Taylor Swift on her part, which I was not ecstatic about, but I respect the artistry).

Lorde talked about writing the album and how she felt a little guilty writing about a person and immortalizing them in her lyrics, but this song is her way of saying they know what they did, and they knew what they were getting into. She said in an interview “But it was important for me to say. And I don’t think that song is apologizing for it. It’s more like, what did you think was going to happen? I was doing this before I met you and I’ll be doing this after you’re gone… I felt quite empowered.” I read that interview, and thought “That’s it! This is what I feel!” Some of you may have been reading this blog post and thinking it’s super petty of me to trash this boy on my website, but he knew I was a writer. And he trashed my life.

That’s enough on him, though. This is about me and career aspirations and what the heck am I doing with my life? Well this whole experience was important because the breakup made me question a lot of things about myself—my confidence, my relationships, etc.—which coincided perfectly with my plans for the future panic where I started questioning a lot of things about myself—my confidence, my qualifications, my passions, my financials, etc. However, I know it’s all going to be okay. I found a quote from a Samuel Beckett play while researching one of my papers this spring that says, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” It’s a simple sentence that became my mantra. The comma is the most important part because it forces you to believe in your fortitude without coming to a full stop in your doubt. You tell yourself there is no way I can get through this, but you quickly remind yourself that of course you can.

I did not intend for this post to go the cliché route, but here we are. This is special because while it sounds like I’m heading for an inspirational moment, I feel as though I cannot inspire any of you, readers, because I am still in this moment of panic, and still striving to learn as much in this moment as I possibly can. I’m going to figure it out, and I will take you on this journey with me, so long as you show up on time.

Age of Nonsense

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Since I was a child, I have never felt like I’ve been the right age. Part of that may be attributed to the fact that I have three older siblings, but I’ve also just always felt a bit like a misfit in my age bracket.

When I turned 14 I was eager to get my first job. In New Jersey, you can’t legally work before then, so I had previously stuck to babysitting. Everywhere I tried to apply seemed to tell me the same thing: they only hire at 16. When I was 16 I went around again with two more years of babysitting under my belt, some volunteer work, and everyone told me the same thing: they only hire at 18. Then I turned 18 and everywhere I wanted to work wanted me to have 1-2 years of experience.

Now I’m at the ripe age of 20. I’ve had a few jobs at school and when I’ve been home in the summers. I have a resume I am constantly updating and distributing. Yet I still have this nagging feeling that I’m not where I’m supposed to be. Nay, I know I’m not where I want to be.

I spent the first half of my life wondering when I was going to be old enough and now here I am wondering if I’ve earned my admittance into the twenty-something club. Maybe I’m a victim of my own generation. We have this obsession with infantilizing ourselves by calling everyday tasks “adulting” and accepting defeat as these millennial babies that no one wants near their workplace. I know I’m not a part of that. I’ve been doing my own laundry since before I could remember. I am confident that if I had a full-time job I could support and take care of myself.

The problem is I’m in the weird limbo that is college and I can’t figure out exactly what that means for me on this societal timeline. I’m supposed to have job prospects. But I’m also supposed to still be learning. I’m supposed to be getting my life together, but it’s also apparently cool to be letting it fall apart.

I’ve written before about how I don’t really believe in this concept of “wasting time,” yet here I am feeling like I’ve wasted so many years. People younger than me have incredible internships and are starting their careers and I feel like I missed my window of opportunity. Is it possible that in the blink of an eye I went from waiting to be old enough to wishing I had more time?

 

I’m Different, Yeah, I’m Different

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Peter Griffin, of Family Guy fame, once sang a song that speaks to me on many levels:

What makes you so special/The fact that you are special/But if everybody’s special/that kinda waters it down/So some of you ain’t special/I can tell you who is special/like you and you ain’t special/ and you are, and you’re not.

We’re all pretty much raised to think that we’re something special, and have the ability to change the world. Every parent thinks their kid is the greatest thing. Even if you have siblings, your parent likely brags like “My kid is THE best!” And you ask them which one and your parent is like “All of them . They’re all the BEST.”

I have this weird complex in my head that I always felt like I was actually super special. Like I will be a celebrity or something because my brain can’t function as an average person. This is a real thing that goes through my head.

But I’m in college now, and I’ve met all these people that are incredible human beings. I sit in my writing classes and think How am I supposed to compete in the industry with these people? I sometimes wonder about people who went to my school like JJ Abrams. Did his professors and peers know he was going to be a huge Hollywood director? I don’t even really want that kind of fame I just want to be better than a lot of people.

But then I think about the average people. The ones who kind of just keep their head down, work hard, and live out the American Dream. By that I mean, they graduate, they get a job, settle down, find a spouse, have kids, then work until they die. That’s an “average life,” right? It’s not a bad thing. Some of us look at that and think it looks miserably boring, but like that’s what most people do and that is what life looks like.

That freaks me out a little bit, though. I don’t want to be average. I have to be special.

There’s nothing wrong with being average, though. We need average people, or else nothing would get done in the world. We all have our talents and gifts. I just like to think that my talents and gifts are going to put me on the map. Like Peter Griffin said, “If everybody’s special, that kinda waters it down.”

I’m the worst. 🙂

xoxo,

Kam

Petty Uncool

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I think most of us grew up with parents who told us not to be sore losers. Especially if you had siblings, this was a big part of growing up—accepting that you’re not always going to win, and when you don’t you have to say “Good game,” and move on.

Right now teens and twentysomethings (I have recently joined the twentysomething club), are really into being “petty.” Maybe it’s one of those passing trends that will soon be over when the next buzzword comes around, but there’s a serious problem underlying this fad. I’ve heard a lot of people talking about refusing to do big things because they can’t do them a certain way. I’m thinking especially about politics and voting, but I don’t want to put an example in your mind if one hasn’t already popped up.

Beyond politics, though, it’s a life habit that people are falling into. If I can’t do this my way, I’m not doing it at all. That’s petty, and that’s not how life works. Maybe I’m reading too much into a fad, but I’m fairly certain I’m not.

Why is it a cool thing to be petty? answer: it’s not. It shouldn’t be. It’s immature. I’m not talking about you being pressured into doing something you don’t want to do. Refusal to do something for a valid reason is not petty. Petty is not going to your best friend’s wedding because she didn’t pick you as maid of honor. Petty is being a sore loser.

I’ve fallen into this trap recently. That’s what people in my generation seem to do—we latch onto a fad “ironically” but then it becomes a part of our lives, and we need to take back control. Remember when sarcasm was used occasionally and was actually funny? Now people name sarcastic as a character trait they possess. That’s not cool! I’m sorry, it’s not about being cool, but it’s about being a better human, and untethered sarcasm isn’t going to get you there.

Stop being petty.

xoxo,

Kam

Time

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First and foremost, let us all take a deep breath and remember that time is a man-made concept.

I’ve been thinking about the future and life in general lately, and it’s insane. That’s the best way I can describe it. Life is insane. You’re born, you do some stuff, then you die. And whether or not that matters does not matter. Whether you believe each life is equally meaningful or completely meaningless does not matter because they mean the same thing. Stay with me.

If you want to believe my life as a contribution to this earth means equally as much as Mother Teresa’s great. But that belief, I think, means the same thing as the belief that every life is meaningless. Because if we all mean something, we cancel each other out. You need me, and I need the next person, so it’s a random cycle of meaning that doesn’t mean anything.

What does that have to do with time? Well, I think our culture revolves around this idea that we’re running out of time. “Life is short.” “If you’re not living you’re dying.” “Time is money.” Everyone is at least a little obsessed with this hourglass inside of us because we’re afraid that time is going to run out before we get to accomplish great and amazing things.

I once read this thing probably on tumblr or whatever that said “I wish people would stop saying life is short. It is literally the longest thing you will ever do.” That’s a fact. The longest thing I, Kamaron, will ever do is my life however long that may be. So what is the rush? I’m not saying slow down and live every moment like it’s your last–that’s a whole other thing I don’t really subscribe to–I just think we should stop overthinking the time thing. Think outside of yourself. Sure, you could die at any second, but you know what? The world could stop spinning at any second. Who knows?

I think it’s really important for young people to wrap their heads around this. We get so caught up in what other people are doing faster than us that we lose sight of what we want. Goals become should-have-dones, and life is just a race to the graveyard. Yes, some things are time sensitive. But there isn’t going to be a time when your days move faster than days before them. Sure there are times you feel like all this time has passed, but that’s all in your head.

I don’t think it’s really possible to “waste time.” You gain something out of every moment. Whether it’s a lesson learned in time management or a moment when you just unwind, you got something. I told a professor last semester I needed to prioritize my time better and not just watch Netflix and she said, “Yeah, but if Netflix is what you need to do to relax and rejuvenate, then you need to do it sometimes.” No, this whole idealistic stream of consciousness wasn’t an excuse for me to keep watching Netflix, but she was so right. There are times when you have to buckle down and work towards a goal, and there are times when you need to take a break and give yourself the space to feel at ease.

 

xoxo,

Kam