1. Don’t go to the graduation ceremony in May. Don’t be allured by the fact that the color hoods for the gowns are in enticing color schemes for the humanities. Listen to Obama speak remotely from your computer; complain on Tittar about the over-abundance of the word "destiny" in his speech. Hear his voice and the sound of shitty esperana music coming from BTB, the restaurant across the street that had to change its name after an unfortunate lawsuit with the Big Ten.
Watch the bros swagger downhill toward the Colosseum-stadium out your window. Spray the ones who try to pee on the side of your co-op. Wonder how it has been five months since you graduated. Wonder whether you should have gone. Write anti-bro poetry with lots of hopeful em-dashes. Imagine elsewhere.
2. During this time period, develop an unhealthy obsession with the mailbox. Establish a rapport with Oz, the mail guy. Vigilantly check the mail for thick packages from prospective grad schools. Think this gives you an air of importance as you sit on the porch and scowl at joggers rather than constituting as vaguely sociopathic behavior. This moment is for slowly considering the way your trajectory is being decided in abstract ways. Keep this as an intermittent ritual or you will turn into a future fiend, annoying all your friends, consuming unhealthy amounts of caffeine with purposelessness and nurturing a twitch for kicks.
3. Work whatever job you can. Score papers of fourth grade standardized tests every morning in a hotel for two months. Coeval to this consider the possibility of teaching, offshore drilling, Ponzi schemes, and become well-versed in the promotional material of government-subsidized nonprofits.
As your desperation increases in proximity to the end of your lease, painstakingly begin to evaluate your recent life choices. Lament everything from the consummate choice of graduating early to which multivitamin is best for your health. Resolve this crisis of paralysis by spending money you should be saving on over-priced beverages and tacos. During this time, your greatest achievement will be the time you created a hashtag that caught on via Tittar: #annoyingfirstworldproblems.
4. Collaborate on a zine about nipslips, dead celebrities or obscure political causes with fellow deviants. Find another place to live on the other side of a small town. Read unhealthy amounts of Hipster Runoff at your job at the library. Recognize the handles of some users and cultivate antipathy or appreciation, respectively.
5. Start going to noise shows in Detroit. Be prepared for when your friends in bands dislike anything you opine about the level of irony in noise. Attend USSF in the summer with your roommates and notice how for two weeks everyone cleans up their leftovers. Have birthday parties with pinatas filled with Salsghetti and other regrettable flavors. Feel sad you’re subletting.
Once you’ve acclimatized to your new environment, recognize it’s time to leave. Make plans for the future like spinning a globe in an elementary school classroom and pointing at somewhere. Think that if you did this, you’d probably land in the middle of an ocean. Enjoy summer nights on your porch growing increasingly hostile to capitalism in relation to the duration of time where you lack employment.
6. Learn about the beauty of Googling “bypass AVS” when dealing for the first time with nefarious adult responsibility, the first of which, is coping with depersonalized telecommunication about monies. Get a real job, wonder what's next, as if life were some to do list to check off.
7. Adopt an attitude of embracing ambivalence.
quietly things started
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