Being a Hipster is Overrated.
My generation is in so many ways “The Hipster Generation”.
We have a blatant disregard and disgust for social norms, and we make sure everyone knows it. The Hippies were like that in the 60s, punk rockers in the 80s, but they had a collective purpose for their actions and ideas. We fight the norm just to be “different”. We have no cause, no purpose, no course of action. We just are.
Being an artist, it was very easy to place myself in a group of society where the broke rule, the creative are king, and sluttiness and drugs make more popular than money.
I loved it. I loved my hip, artsy friends and my stupid tiny apartment and my edgy neighborhood and my thrift store clothes. I pretended to enjoy drinking PBR. It was easy to say, “Fuck these rich, boring people. They aren’t living life. Fuck white bread America and your suburban blandness. Fuck it all.”
And then one day I woke up. I woke up to my life where I was working almost 50 hours a week at a crappy, dead-end job, so I could continue living my hipster life as comfortably as possible. I woke up and realized I’ve had nothing but crappy relationships with crappy men, and at the end of the day I was still waking up next to my two cats. I woke up and realised that yes, I am only 22, it’s my time to party, but do I really want to wake up when I’m 30 to realize that my story hasn’t changed?
I woke up, and I saw that I was selling myself short.
I hold people to very high standards in life, but I wasn’t doing the same for myself. I deduced myself to living a “hipster lifestyle” because it filled the void from working towards nothing. Instead of sleeping on floors after drinking 40s and partying on Tuesday nights in ways I wouldn’t even remember the next day, I decided I am going to start building my life, so I won’t wake up when I’m 30 and realize I’m just like half of San Francisco and I’m still struggling to get a degree and I’m still working at a bar and I’m still sharing a crappy apartment with a bunch of other people…
I have every intention of being successful, and fulfilled, and excited every day, and I’m not going to spend 40+ hours a week just to live paycheck to paycheck to get there. I’ll be successful in the way I desire because I know I deserve it.
