A friend of mine once described a period of time about the end of college and the beginning of career as the time he ate a lot of ramen. It’s cheap and filling. Ever since then, I’ve had a concept of a “ramen noodle phase.” It’s pretty much any time when you’re struggling to get things started, working towards your goals but a good ways off from reaching them. Waiting for that big break that’s going to make all the difference.

Someone said to me a few weeks ago that I’m too young to be impatient. Sometimes I repeat that to myself, but in truth – I’m impatient for such basic things. An apartment, friends, enough income to live on and occassionally treat myself to something.

So I prefer to think of it as a ramen noodle phase. I achieve a few steps towards my goals each day. Some of those steps are repetitive stones tossed in the pond – another resume sent out, another application completed. Tomorrow it’ll be a few hours of temp work, a little money earned, a reachout to a new contact, and maybe some applications done in the evening. As long as I see everything as a stepping stone, I won’t go crazy from this sense of inertia, this inability to make the next big step happen. I’m doing all I can.