The Start

We all have a starting point.. The inspiration, the motivator, the driving force. For some, that is positive, and in this case, it is negative. It is a narrative I couldn't find when I needed it, it is a story that many have but don't feel is worth the tell, and if I can just make one person realize that they are not alone, then this vulnerable experience won't be the selfish adventure it is starting as.

I am apart of the Millennial Generation. You may have heard of us, those good for nothing, hands always out, adding no value to society group of 20-30 somethings. After my freshman year in college, the floor fell out of the financial world and all hell broke loose. This was a year after my mind was made up that I would change the world by teaching young children. This was after eighteen years of being drilled into me that I was going to college, that you could have no career without college, that even if I wanted to just "flip burgers" I was going to college to be the best damn burger flipper there ever was.

Let's fast-forward to 2011, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology (because most people change their degrees a few times in college), and returning home in efforts to find a job, move out, and hustle my way up the ladder of life. Through various trials and tribulations surely to be told at some point, I found myself a few years later in a job that met that "CHANGE THE WORLD" criteria. But in the end, it ended up destroying me. I lost that job at the end of 2015, couldn't find a job until mid-2016 while battling depression and a complete lack of self-esteem, and here I am today, 28 years old, living at home, with no credit card debt and one loan paid off (still 10's of $1,000 in the whole) and working to move in with my boyfriend of three years.

At this point I consider myself a phoenix still rising from the ashes, turning horrific moments into something positive, and realizing I was on a track of life that was never going to get me to where I wanted to be going. And while I want to share the hard part of the story, let's also discuss what I am doing to move past all of that and become the human I have always desired to be. 

Sure, no one is likely to have THIS EXACT story. But a third of those "Millennial" hand-out seeking slobs are in a similar boat. Living at home, with thousands of dollars in debt, many not because they want to be, but out of necessity. Student loans, particularly for me private student loans, drowning financially, for a degree I was told I was required to get, to come out in an overly saturated job market, and repeatedly told you are too qualified, no experience, too much experience, and settling for any job that will pay the bills. 

This is my story -- and hopefully, it will be in someways helpful to someone else. Because just by knowing you aren't alone is a comforting thing.