I Want to Live Inside This Prada Ad

PERSONAL ESSAY

Dear Reader,

I’m coming to you fresh off a long weekend hijacked by that Hulu show Adam and I binged: Fleishman Is in Trouble. Have any of you seen it? It ruined 50% of our weekend. The mini-series is an eight-part character study about middle age vs youth. Possibility vs chosen choices. Regret, longing, and satisfaction. Plus patriarchy, identity, relationships, and the general pain of living. I don’t recommend it, but it did deeply affect both Adam and me, so I guess it’s good. Good in that it did its job. But it definitely didn’t feel good to watch. These days I try to protect myself when it comes to the media I consume. It’s too easy for fictional trauma to seep into my bones. I try to stay away.

For better or worse (felt worse), it got both of us thinking. We are both young, in our mid-twenties, representing the time of life that is the before picture in the show. We have our entire lives ahead of us. We’re baby adults, toddling around the real world, trying to figure out where we’d like to go. Adam’s made his way so far in tech startups. But so far doesn’t equal forever. Will he go a different way? When will he know? How do we make those leaps? I’ve been in the working world three measly years and already blown up the good girl corporate creative life I thought I was supposed to be striving for. And now here I am, a freelance writer chasing a big dream wondering if I’ll ever be able to “make it.” Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.