The completely unfiltered diary of a 23-year-old girl

Dear diary,

To be honest, I don’t like using the word ‘diary’. Sounds kinda lame. ‘Journal’ feels more sophisticated and adult-like, but ‘dear journal’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, y’know.

Anyway, just a quick run-through on what these posts are gonna be about — exactly what the title suggests. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. So if you don’t wanna waste your time reading the messy, overly honest and unfiltered thoughts of a technically adult woman trying to figure out life, now would be a fantastic time to click away.

Now works too.

Or now.

Still here?

Cool. Let’s get into this.

Ever noticed it’s really hard to find people’s real thoughts nowadays? I actually tried looking for a ‘real diary’ online; surely someone would’ve published one by now, and it would be kinda interesting, no? But surprisingly, a quick google search yielded nothing except the diary of Anne Frank…which is definitely not the type of trashy-but-interesting read I was looking for.

It’d be nice to have something like that though: the true, unfiltered thoughts of a fellow newly-minted adult. To see that you’re not the only 23-year-old out there who goes to the baking shop to buy chocolate chips, not to bake brownies or anything, but as a snack. Who’s started plucking the hair on her forearms out of sheer boredom during the Coronavirus lock-down. Who finally yolo-ed and texted a cute guy but got an extremely professional, lukewarm reply.

Ok, maybe that’s just me. Damn.

But anyway, here’s to writing something real; none of that ‘highlights only’ stuff we see everywhere nowadays, which just ends up making you feel inadequate cos rather than cleaning up your room, baking cool stuff, or video calling your ten different groups of friends, you’ve just been rolling around in bed most of the time. And, it seems like the more ‘adult’ people become, the more they start filtering their thoughts. ‘That person is fucking weird’ becomes ‘I wish I could understand how that person thinks’, and ‘that is absolutely none of my concern, I’m not interested, please stop boring me with these details’ becomes ‘that’s interesting’. Or maybe everyone has just become more mellow and forgiving, and I’m still stuck as a tactless asshole.

So I’ll be writing this without editing, meaning once thoughts are out, I’m not gonna go back and delete them or revise them because they’re too embarrassing or something. Though if something needs to be clarified, or a typo needs correcting, I’d probably do that. If I’m not too lazy. So no guarantees on quality — I can only guarantee extreme realness. Might be a good thing; might not.

Well, here we go.

~Week 0~

So I got a job at some government corporation — it’ll be my first proper job after graduating from university. Sounds fairly interesting, like maybe a 6/10, which is probably good enough for a job. I’m starting to realize most people don’t actually like their jobs. All this ‘study hard so you can get your dream job’ BS was. Well. BS. Just a myth to get kids through school with the motivation to get ‘A’s (though getting smacked by your parents for ‘not doing well’ was definitely equally motivating). But yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who actually, truly enjoyed their work. Maybe this one guy who was a professional dog-walker. Lol.

We shall see how that goes. Dreading work has kinda been a core part of my character recently. I’d be meeting with friends and we’d eventually talk about work, since the whole ‘working adult’ thing is new to a lot of us. And generally we’d go through the whole process, starting from ‘Hey how’s that job hunt going’, to ‘Wow congrats on landing that role!’, and finally, to ‘Fuck this. Fuck work. We’re so fucked.’ My new go-to introduction should be ‘Hi, I’m Amber, and I don’t like working. Pleasure to meet you.’

Occasionally you have people like Kay (a friend) who are zen to monk-worthy levels, who even seem almost excited to start work. At times like this I wonder if they’re truly excited, or they’re trying to convince me that they’re excited, or they’re trying to convince themselves.

The thought of making money online and being one of those swanky ‘digital nomads’ with fancy Instagrams with their ‘hey look, I’m working on my writing on my laptop in this Starbucks in town, basically living the life’ type of posts seems enticing. Mostly because that means you don’t have to wear suffocating office clothes and deal with colleagues who are forced to be professional rather than real. And you get to take a nap at anytime you want. Can’t do that in most offices, no.

So I started freelancing on Fiverr a few months back, and crazily enough, managed to make $1000 within the first two months. It was definitely mostly luck, but I totally hadn’t expected it. And the total number of hours I’d spent earning that was probably about 50 hours, which means about $20/hr. No, it’s not one of those crazy figures you see online in those clickbaity articles, but hell, that was a hella good amount of money for something you could do from home, on your laptop. Which is also part of the reason why I’ve decided to try out Medium. This ‘unfiltered diary’ thing is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, so why not do it on Medium. No one’s gonna find a random blog or Wix anyway. And maybe some people will find it interesting.

So I’ve got my fingers crossed. If somehow this Fiverr thing or Medium takes off, maybe I won’t even have to start work next week. It’s a desperate last-ditch attempt.

Ok but seriously, more about Fiverr. It really is a nice side-hustle, though I have no idea how to market my services. Lack of customers is definitely the limiting factor right now. Maybe I’ll run some Facebook ads or something, hm. To be honest, I don’t even know where all my current customers are coming from. It’s quite amazing. Just today I received a request for a $1000 gig, so hopefully that works out. The client, lets call them Bea, is probably hitting up a few different sellers to figure out the best one. Well, with my obvious charm and slick writing, I hope I can win Bea over. Lol.

Cool. That’s probably it for now. I can’t believe I’m sharing this with the world, but hiding behind anonymity definitely helps. Let’s see where this diary goes!

xo,

Amber

Go to next entry (Week 1) →