Being home for the summer after graduating from college this past May, I finally thought that this was the time where I’d get back on top of work for this blog. I’ve had this blog since my freshmen year of high school (crazy right?!) and now I’m a full on college graduate. I’ve been pretty proud with how I’ve kept up with this blog over the years and it’s gone through a lot of development from being a random place where I posted clothing hauls and fun activities to do in Dubai, to a more niche space where I share my own experience as an expatriate and international student. However, since graduating and no longer qualifying as an international student I feel as though I’m sort of at a loss for part of my identity on this blog. Of course, I still am an expatriate and an international living in DC, but it’s hard to define what sort of group I fit into now and what my niche is – maybe it’s “international who is working abroad” I’m not sure.

One thing that I did not realize at the time of graduating was that I’d also lose a lot of the content I write about now that I’m no longer a student. No more study tips, days in my life (I guess I could do this, they’d just be pretty boring), or college life hacks. I have some final posts about college I want to put out there, but after that, I guess we’re saying goodbye to this kind of content until I decide to go back to school one day! I know that there’s a whole new genre of content out there waiting for me to tap into, but it’s hard to tap into that niche when I haven’t really started living my adult life yet! So… at this moment I’m sort of just at this loss of what to write about because I feel like I’m between two stages of life.

My postgraduate job doesn’t start until the fall, so I have a whole summer holiday of free time which I’ve been spending with my family in London. However, I have to say that I am just not used to having this much free time anymore! I know that sounds awfully pretentious to complain about having time off, but I haven’t had this much time off since probably the summer I graduated from high school (which was also in the midst of the pandemic so it wasn’t like that was a normal summer either) and I don’t really know what to do with myself.

Of course, in typical fashion, I had to find something to do to entertain myself. I don’t really think that I’m capable of spending an entire summer just frolicking anymore – I need some sort of structure and some goals. I spent the beginning of the summer doing some traveling but now that I’m back here in London for a while, I’ve found myself trying to be productive and prepare for the future. I’ve been studying for the GMAT which is not exactly what I’d call fun, but it gives me something to work towards.

I had this vision that I’d spend this summer in the sunshine in London, drinking matcha, reading books, and running in the parks, but that just hasn’t been the reality. Maybe because we’re having an extra gloomy summer here in the UK which doesn’t make spending time outside very appealing, but I also think that there’s another reason why this summer hasn’t exactly matched what I had planned out in my head.

I think that this summer marks a period of transition for me; I’m no longer a student or a child but I also don’t feel like an adult because I’m spending the summer at home doing all the things I used to do when I was a kid. Everyone keeps telling me that I should savor this last moment of peace before the real world starts, but instead I’ve found myself itching to get started and to start proving myself; to me, instead of this summer feeling like one last relaxing vacation it sort of feels more like the lead up to a big race. People around me are congratulating me on graduating college and on landing a job (which is lovely), but it also makes me feel like this is the lead up to a big event of “being an adult” which I’m not sure how I’ll perform in yet! That’s why to me, this summer feels more like a preparation period than a vacation period.

Don’t get me wrong, that preparation period is also exciting! I keep thinking about what a special period of my life this is as a recent college graduate. To be a young adult with so much freedom to choose which way my adult life will go (it’s a scary thought but also an exciting one!) It’s a time to think about what kind of a person I want to be in my adult life, how I want to hold myself, and what I want to prioritize. I get to do all the fun things like signing my first lease, buying “work clothes”, and talking to my friends about their own jobs. Like I said, I have a lot of excitement inside of me but also a lot of anticipation of what’s to come.

So with all of that anticipation and trying to plan things out as much as I can, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going on with this blog (like I said, I always need to be working towards something and need a distraction so I’ve been thinking about this a lot). Blogs aren’t as popular as they used to be when I started this, but I still love writing posts and don’t see myself as a “content creator” making Tik Toks… but then again that’s what’s popular right now. I love getting everything out onto a page, crafting it into a coherent post, and hitting publish to something I am proud of, but I’m not sure that many people just browse blogs anymore. We’ll see what the way to go is… but rest assured, I’m not quitting anytime soon!

See you next week,