I read an article today about a woman describing her “Asian American quarter-life crisis” in which she received her PhD in psychology and hated her life. She worked hard her whole life because she was told to by her family. It was ingrained in her brain to study, study, study; to get a stable, well-paying job so that she can live life without worry. But she hated her life, and she saw that her fellow peers also hated their life. It was extremely rare to see any of her Asian American friends who actually enjoyed their stable jobs. Eventually, she decided to quit the psychology track and try out jobs that she could find until she found one she enjoyed. She juggled teaching and consulting jobs and found happiness there. At the end of her article, she asked the readers how their experiences were—if they were different or similar, or just how they felt.
I myself am a half Asian American, half military brat. I spent half of my school life on military bases in South Korea. My mother is South Korean and my father is white. I went to ten different schools before college, including two high schools on opposite sides of the world. It was an interesting life, to say the least. Now, my mom wasn’t your typical ride-on-your-back through high school type Asian mom, but she was strict. She didn’t have to act strict—I knew my place, and what to do, so that she wouldn’t have to be (most of the time). I strived to get A’s in high school, not to please them, but because it pleased me. My mom wouldn’t get involved as long as I reported A’s, she didn’t mind if they weren’t 100%’s. My dad was super chill and would actually reward me money on report cards for each A, and a bonus if I got straight A’s. I graduated high school in the top 10% of my class, and my parents were happy.
I never really found out how my mom felt when I declared that I would go to school to study creative writing. I knew she wanted me to become a doctor, lawyer, or the best job—a dentist to fix her teeth—but I knew already that I wouldn’t be happy with that kind of life. I am an introvert so I wouldn’t make a good lawyer. I don’t like blood or needles and I cringe when I hear the drill at the dentist even if I’m just there to get a cleaning. Maybe my mom knew that I wouldn’t actually succeed if she forced me into those careers so she said nothing about my degree. And once again, as long as I brought home A’s, remained on the Dean’s List every semester, and kept up with being on the tennis team, my mom did nothing to argue or fight my chosen path.
But at this point of my life, not even a full year after I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, I kind of wish my mom DID do something. I almost wish that she pushed me to at least major in English instead. Maybe I could have become a scholar, or at least a professor. But I pass by my degree every morning—still sitting in the foyer where I left it when I brought it home—and I think: “What the hell am I going to do with you?” I look at jobs on Simplyhired.com or Indeed.com or even Craigslist, and all I see for writing jobs are technical writers, copywriters, legal writers. None of that interests me, and I’m not qualified for them anyway (it’s a known fact that, today, even entry-level positions require 0-1 years of experience, and the 30-100 other people who will also apply for that job will have more experience than you, so you shouldn’t even bother).
And I did have a semi-purpose I found in my last year of college—when it was almost too late to get an internship and only one could be found in my city that I was half-interested in that I didn’t get anyway—and that was video game writing. I love video games. I spend all of my free time playing games with or without my boyfriend. I judge them a little too harshly sometimes, and the awfully written ones make me really want to write my own. The bad thing about getting into this industry is that only the big companies are hiring. Smaller ones already have their writers—anyone can write. The programmer or designer can double as a writer to save money. Jobs I see for writers for video games at small companies want writers who can also program or do concept art or anything. So I looked at big companies like Bethesda or Riot, but big companies want experience. This can be applied to every job everywhere in America today—there is no way to be qualified for a job unless you did internships in college, if you were lucky enough to know what you wanted to do (or were forced to do) in time. Small places don’t want you because you aren’t a jack of all trades. Big companies don’t want you because you don’t have enough experience. Where the hell am I going to get experience then?!
So now I am stuck at my parents’ house, writing whenever I find the motivation to. The plan now is to try and build a video game writing portfolio that I could maybe send out, or to finish a book I started in my last year of college. But it is incredibly hard to self-motivate, especially when I feel like I’ve lost my purpose in life. I find myself procrastinating every day by playing games—with the excuse that I’m “researching.” I complain and complain about not having a job, but in truth I’m scared to apply. I’m scared of rejection, I’m scared of success. I dread the interview process and if I actually get a job I think I’ll have a heart attack. I think this comes from being a natural introvert but also from staying in my house all day almost every day since I graduated last May.
And I keep trying to make a plan: do this, write this. Just write one chapter a week—that isn’t much but that might finish a book within the year. Just write a blog—but I find that when you spend all day in your house it’s hard to find something worth writing about to publish online. Just apply to one job a day—that isn’t much either but maybe, with a little luck, I could get something. Don’t even try to just apply to jobs that are in my field, apply to EVERYTHING. Retail, data entry, secretary, anything, anything. Just something to put on my resume for future jobs. As the days tick by I know I’m digging myself in a hole that I won’t be able to claw out of. “Why was your last job a tutoring job at your college over a year ago, and the job before that a high school job at a crafts store?” I know I’m a failure, and that depression is just making me hide myself in a corner more and more.
When this woman who wrote the “Asian American quarter-life crisis” article and asked how her readers’ lives were, I just wanted to answer that I’m envious. Not envious that she hated her life for a while, because I’m currently in that boat now, but envious because I wish my parents saw just how ridiculous a creative writing degree would be in today’s economy and told me to suck it up and go into something safer. Into accounting maybe, or science as a researcher, or teaching, or going on to graduate school. Even if those fields aren’t exactly safe enough today (as I imagine there is intense competition there as well) I would have probably had a better chance at getting a real job. I wish my parents made me go into something that would have gotten me an internship, which maybe could have turned into a decent full-time job. And in my free time, while I’m saving up money and paying my parents back for paying my way through college, I could write, and maybe really, really write, since I would have so little time to. Then maybe I could already be living with my currently long-distance boyfriend (who also spent a year searching for jobs and only just today finally got one) and we could be living the life of video games and saving up to get married and get a real place.
So my question at the end of my rant isn’t going to be “how did you experience your crisis?” or, “do you regret anything?”
It’s going to be this: What advice do you have for me, the creative writing Bachelor’s degree who dug herself into a career-less hole, who is too depressed (in a non-medical condition way) to self-motivate herself to write, who is too spoiled to deserve any advice in the first place?
P.S. You can read the referenced article here: http://mynameiselizabeth.com/2014/01/22/the-asian-american-quarter-life-crisis/
P.S.S This became a longer rant than I had originally intended. Also bonus question: is it sad that these 1500 words are the most I’ve written in weeks?
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