Hey friends, I’ve been posting writing/comics/comedy-centric stuff into this black hole called Substack. Here’s an excerpt. Check out the full post here.
They say 27 is when you change.
Who’s they? Who knows.
But I believe it.
Because it happened to me. Or at least I happened to it.
It all started where all these types of stories start—at your dream job.
Except it wasn’t really a dream job. Or at least it wasn’t the dream of my 27-year-old self. It was the dream someone makes when they’re like 8 years old watching the Muppet Babies report the news while lugging around a typewriter.
Someday, 8-year-old me thought, that’ll be me.
I’m gonna be a muppet. Baby. And I will also cover the news.
Other than that, there was no real specificity to this dream other than I liked to write, it came naturally to me, and I wanted to be in New York City. But I was practical, which is something ingrained in my DNA on account of being an immigrant from the Philippines who ascended to a *working-class lifestyle in the Bronx in the 1990s thanks to my mom getting a nursing job at a local hospital then petitioning for her husband (my dad) and kids (my sibs and me) to come live with her in America. This meant that instead of going for, say, a creative writing degree of some kind so I could aspire to fart around and write a novel while somehow still being able to pay rent on my West Village apartment like an inexplicably financially solvent ‘90s sex columnist with a Jimmy Choo addiction, I went for a niche that paid the big bucks.
Hard news journalism, babyyyyyyyyy.
I should probably add that I was practical in the way the most practical clown in clown college is practical. That is, a complete buffoon to the larger world but in the creative world a total suit. Like, “Wow,” the other clowns in clown college would have said as I crossed the stage to collect my diploma. “She could have been a mime in a French film like the rest of us but instead she’s gonna go join the circus. Predictable af.”
Fuck them clowns.
Back to my story.
There I was, 27. I was a journalist in New York City. I wore cute suits. I wrote cute stories. I was living the dream. I saw the path laid out so clearly. I could work my way up to editor there. Or get a job at a different publication on a different beat then work my way up to be editor there. Or maybe I could go where all the young hotshot reporters were flocking to off the strength of their really funny tweets: digital media!
None of those felt quite right.
Plus, something 8-year-old me hadn’t anticipated happened.
I got bored.
Bored enough to drum up a new dream, one fitting of a 27-year-old who had lived and learned and saw the misery required of becoming a working writer in the 21st century. I’d clawed my way to get a job as a lowly writer at a trade pub making a cool $46k after some time making $30k. A year. In New York City. In the aughts. You know, when the Googlers and Facebookers and Tweeters were making insert best bro voice here BAAAAAANKKKKKKKKKKKK end bro voice a few blocks thattaway.
I couldn’t afford to pursue another fiscally irresponsible dream. Literally and figuratively. Literally because rent’s expensive, man. Even in 2012. And figuratively because I was almost 30. That’s like 100 in 20something years.
I had to be smart about it. So I did the super smart thing.
And went to grad school.
For writing.
Read the rest on the highly esteemed publication farts & letters.
*This is a loaded term but a cursory research on the internets tells me that nursing was considered a working-class profession in the 90s, and that Filipino nurses often made less than their American peers. I could ask my mom and all her friends if that’s true but talk about awkwarddddd. Plus, it works better for my story if we just take it at face value. Creative liberties and all that.