It only takes one yes.
Five words. Five simple words, each no more than five characters. Five by five by five – it’s already five o’clock and I still haven’t gotten a single word on the page. One word leads to five words which could lead to millions, words filling each minute of my quarter-life crisis until adulthood bleeds onto the next page. When do we know when the chapter is over? We keep on writing, pages brimful with typed words, margins stuffed with scribbles – trying to fit limitless stories into a one-inch margin. Trying to fit our bodies in size-two margins. Trying to fit our twenties into the “best years of our lives” margins. We write and write and write even when the originally blurry plotline is engulfed by sand. We think we’re digging for gold as we shovel some more, only to realize our efforts have a reverse effect; in a desperate attempt to find some clarity on where I’m supposed to be, I’ve only covered up who I am (or maybe who I once was?) with more dust, gravel, and pennies of the 1990s.
Quicksand. It doesn’t stop. While spontaneity and martinis are my newest form of motivation, quicksand pulls me under into the next stage of life – and to be clear, too clear, it is involuntary. I write and write until the pages are full, but then the margins are full, and when I've flipped each corner over until the frail paper fibers split, and when I cannot reread the page again, I am forced to enter the next chapter.
Or so I hope. Not everyone gets that lucky. How is it that the one thing we want more of – life – is the one thing we want to stop, to slow down, to freeze, to halt so quickly that the perfectly picked apples fly out of the grocery cart. Perhaps some other metaphor from my childhood shopping experiences would work better, but you know the feeling of when your mom sees a good sale and the cart comes to a sudden stop. We want life to stop, so we can simmer a singular moment eternally, yet when it’s about to stop eternally, all we want is eternal life.
How high-maintenance. I agree.
Ah, yes. Just one, please. Just one martini, or maybe one true friend, or perhaps “only one more,” which is never the truth. In this case, Just One Yes, please. JOY, over everything, even if all we’re hoping for is enough sustenance to cover this month’s rent and a latte in the most over-romanticized city of our generation. (Generation? No, the entire history. Because Hamilton isn’t written about an ambitious immigrant who ventured to Salt Lake City, or Knoxville, or even my dearest Chicago). JOY. How ironic that the one thing that gives you Just One Yes won’t necessarily bring you joy. It may bring you security, a routine, a grudgingly cold trip to the subway, but true joy is rare. Only the lucky ones get a cocktail of decent money and a shot of passion.
How high-maintenance, they say. I disagree.
But alas, it only takes one. Even though we give and give and give many, perhaps hundreds, of resumes, cover letters, and pretty-please emails throughout our amateur careers. We envy those indulging on a silver platter, but we like the way our thrifted china matches our shower curtain which matches the mismatched converse we traded on the last day of college. Eating on our previously loved china reminds us how connected we all are; what delicious Christmas meals have been eaten on this, what a wonderful wedding gift this once was, and how gorgeous do our Honeycrisp slices look smothered in peanut butter tonight? But silver, god, how generic. So 2000 and late.
Waiting. Always waiting. In a constant cycle of high confidence and low chaos until I get the one yes I’m looking for. But let’s be abundantly clear: Not All Yeses Are Created Equal. Because unlike the unfortunate ones, also known as the majority of the American workforce, I am looking for my cocktail of a career. The kind of cocktail you don't regret spending half a day's work on because it tastes so damn good. I refuse to be anything but drunk on passion and inebriated with exuberance when it comes to how I spend, quite literally, the majority of life’s hours.
So I wait by the phone. I pretend it’s a landline, because, well, *the drama* but our generation has decided that anything with permanence is too much of a commitment. Do we take our mini-selves everywhere we go so we can stalk others, so others can obsess over us, or so we count every single step? A fitness-obsessed, body-conscious generation also has eight hours of screen time each day – what could possibly be the correlation?! Full disclosure: I’m a part of the problem.
The phone hasn’t rung, or rather, my email hasn’t “dinged,” but for the sake of this confessional, I am a proud bright-fuschia-colored-landline-owner. A landline dressed to the nines with the dial and the 20-foot-cord and the little black book as a partner in crime. Living life in color was a lot easier when I was a child, but it’s the little things that count. So, I have a fuschia landline, because if pink is not a personality, what color is?
All it takes is one yes, and as the sun goes down far too early yet tomorrow comes far too late, I am only left with question marks. No nos, today, no, so does that count as a win? Sometimes the agony of exercising patience is worse than a no.
Unless, of course, I am patient for the delectable yes. So, I wait, and I write, and I wait, and I write. I doodle, flip the page’s ear to come back to it tomorrow until I realize that the chapter is over and it’s time to start anew. In honor of optimism and a year of self-revelations, I wait until my perfect yes, my knight in shining armor, calls to start this chapter.
Five a.m, now. Five little words, all less than five letters, but only three letters of importance. End of the alphabet, but the beginning of the story.
To the five little words in the love language of careers,
caroline hughes
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