Hello everyone! I’ve been saying this a little too much in blog posts recently but… it’s been a while! In that while I’ve packed up my summer, traveled back to the US, moved into my new apartment, and also taken a few trips to move in my sisters to different colleges. It has been the beginning my adult life so it’s been a little overhwelming getting all these moving parts to fit together and discovering what my new life will look like, but I have to say I’ve been loving the postgrad era so far. With that being said, I haven’t started work yet (I start in just a couple of weeks) so maybe I’ll be saying something different once I get busy!
I really thought that I’d arrive back in DC after the summer and that it would feel weird not to head back to Georgetown but honestly, it felt nice! I’ve really been enjoying living in DC but having the freedom to live a more adult life here. I absolutely loved my time at Georgetown but I didn’t realize until now, just how much I stayed in the Georgetown bubble while I was there. I never really ventured out of the neighborhood and if I did it was for a specific event like dinner with friends or for an appointment. Now that I’m living outside of the Georgetown bubble (and in a much more connected neighborhood since Georgetown has no metro stop) I have to say that it feels like DC is my oyster! It’s been so fun to explore different neighborhoods and feel like I can go just about anywhere in the city, after all, DC is pretty small.
Moving into my own place has been its own beast, but I think I’m finally coming to the end of it. I’ve learned how to build so much new furniture, learned how to use an electric screwdriver (big things happening here), and stopmed on approximately 100 cardboard boxes to get them to fit in the communal recycling which had me breaking out in a sweat everyday! Even through all of that, I’ve absolutely been loving living in my new place and I feel so lucky that I have the opportunity to live in an apartment like this right out of college! It’s been a lot of fun to decorate and be in full control of choosing all my furniture and the bits and bobs around the place. I haven’t really been doing anything particularly interesting since I’ve moved in as I haven’t started work yet, but it’s been fun to live my normal life on my own but just at a more leisurely pace! What I mean by that is that I can wake up and go for a long run without being stressed about a deadline or getting ready for class or work; I can make elaborate meals because I’m not on a time crunch, and I can spend some time just reading or watching tv in the evenings. There’s nothing special about the routine I’ve been living but it feels all that more exciting simply because it’s mine!
I was talking to a friend the other day and we were both talking about how we thoroughly enjoyed Georgetown but that we’re not nostalgic wishing we could go back – we’re enjoying living adult life in DC. It made me realize that I have kind of been waiting for this stage of my life forever; the stage where I have a stable routine, nothing fancy or exciting but something that’s just mine, where I have the opportunity to live on my own and curate my own space, where I have great friends around me who I can do fun things with, and where I have a lot more autonomy with my life! For example, as I’m writing this post it’s a crisp Sunday morning and I just went on a run to the monuments, got home and made a delicious breakfast, put in a load of laundry, and am sitting with the windows thrown wide open writing this blog post while sipping a matcha latte. Like I said, nothing special, but just exactly what I want to be doing! I hope that I can remember how special it feels to be able to live a life like this when the goings get hard and being in charge of my life gets overhwelming, as I know it will sometimes be.
It’s not that I was ever at Georgetown and was thinking, I can’t wait to get out of here! No way. I loved being at Georgetown and thoroughly enjoyed all the college experiences like living in the same building as my friends, bumping into people on the way to class, and those occasional terrible classes that were rough but also great bonding experiences, all things that I know I’ve said goodbye to now that I’ve graduated. They’re things that I enjoyed in the moment but now that I’ve graduated I feel as though I’ve had my eyes opened slightly. College is a once in a lifetime experience and I wouldn’t have had it any other way, but it’s also like living in a bubble. Your activities are governed by what the other students are doing, typical college activities, and at least in Georgetown we didn’t really leave the neighborhood. While that meant that the college experience was so special and tight-knit for me, it’s also meant that breaking out of that bubble when I graudated has been like a breath of fresh air! I keep going to different spots around DC and thinking to myself, “how have I lived here for three years and not been here?!” It’s nice to live in a little bit of a more grown up neighborhood and have the freedom to get to wherever I want to around DC and do whatever I want to do. This past weekend, I spent Saturday at Eastern Market with a friend and going plant shopping (the dream!) and then grilling on someone’s rooftop with a bunch of friends. It feels as though I’m at the precipice of starting a new exciting era of living in the big city in my twenties and I can’t wait to get started! I know there will be some rough moments but I hope that when those moments strike, I can look back to this post and remember how grateful and excited I am to be starting this new era!
See you next week,
