This is my second post this week, which is a rare thing. I am unlikely to make a habit of this. Credit it to the fact that my two posts together add up to less than the word count of any of my more recent preceding posts.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to win one of the 20 Something Bloggers 2011 Bootleg Awards. I was voted “Blogger We Wish Blogged More.” I’ve decided to declare this the slacker award.

This post is to profess my love to the 20sb community. If you are currently a 20-something and a blogger, you should join.

The 20sb community has been amazing. I have been something of a sporadic member/contributer to the community, and tend to be more of a lurker than an active participant. That said, I never fail to feel welcomed. I love the fact that I can always find an interesting discussion to peruse somewhere in the forums. In the sea of bullshit that is the internet, it’s nice to have a collection of people who are as intelligent, articulate, and friendly as many of the amazing people in 20sb community are.

Returning home after graduation last May, I really thought I would be around for a short while and then on my merry little way. I applied for a few jobs at first, grossly misunderstanding not only the current economic situation but the basic reality of the job hunt even in a good economy. After countless dozens of applications were met with silence and a small handful of “Thanks but no thanks” emails, a few weeks turned into a few months, which turned into what I now know will end up being a little over a year. Last summer I turned down an opportunity that would have gotten me out of here, because I was naive enough to believe I would find something better.

My parents are amazing. My mom and I have always been close, and they are completely sincere in wanting to give me all the time I need to live under their roof and eat all of their food and basically be a kid for a little longer. They are wonderful. But living here also drives me insane. Some days and weeks are better than others (as with anything), but on the whole, it’s demoralizing. I hate running into people that I knew from high school, because I appear to be the only person in my graduating class who lives at home. There are all sorts of things that none of us can help that happen every single day to drive home this feeling that I am still in high school. Sometimes I feel like college never happened. Like I really am stuck in the worst Time Warp (no, let’s not do it again) imaginable and all of my worst high school fears have totally come true.

Then of course there is the reality of my insane college debt — the reason I’m electing to go the fiscally responsible but soul crushing route of remaining at home. I try to limit my thoughts on this subject to those that are rational and productive and dealing with the day-to-day of paying the bills. However, given my debt’s direct relationship to the constant cry of, “HOLY FUCKING HELL WHY AM I LIVING IN THIS TOWN? ABOVE MY PARENT’S GARAGE? HOW AM I ABOUT TO BE 23 YEARS OLD WHEN I AM OBVIOUSLY BASICALLY 16?” it becomes very difficult for me to avoid the inevitable line of thought in which my debt becomes an unmanageable thing that I must fret about until I feel utterly hopeless and curl up in the fetal position and sob for an hour or two.

As a general rule, I avoid discussing these things, because they strike me as sad and pathetic and generally unpleasant. I have watched myself let this policy slip a little more over the course of the months that I have had this blog. In the beginning, my job hunt was comical. The application typo was turned into future cocktail party fodder (because, you see, I will have a job soon! and I will go to fabulous cocktail parties!). No big deal. I’ll get a job soon. Then it became a subject to avoid. Through the blog I could talk about all the stupid shit I was doing to escape. Eventually, I confessed the reality of my morning conundrum, and the questions I have to ask myself to drag my ass out of bed in the morning.

Throughout all of this, whether I discussed it directly on my blog or not, the presence of a community like 20sb, made it so much more manageable. This will sound silly, of course, to those of you who know me personally and have better shit to do than spend hours on the internet. That’s fine. I don’t really care. You thinking that I’m a little bit weird probably isn’t new for either one of us.

When I discovered 20sb, I thought at first that it might be an interesting “resource” in trying to make my blog somehow legitimate. I still haven’t quite been able to process what exactly that means, mostly because I have given up on that endeavor and stopped caring. After a while, I realized, “HOLY SHIT, THESE PEOPLE ALL GET IT. THEY ARE GOING THROUGH THIS NOW. OR THEY HAVE BEEN THROUGH IT RECENTLY. IT’S NOT JUST ME.” I bonded with people like Tits Coyote Rose who seems to understand this phenomenon better than anyone. I had people like Risha to (albeit probably unknowingly) talk me off the wall with eloquent words that sounded like lullabies and made me think, “Oh. Yes. All right. Sure. It’ll be fine.”

When people do things for you, you are supposed to thank them. My list of vices is very long, but I am not ungrateful. Even when home life causes me to snap a little, I try to make sure my parents know that I am aware of how much worse things could be without them.

So thank you, 20sb. Not really for the slacker award. I mean, all right, yes, thank you for the slacker award too. But mostly thank you for taking care of me and helping me feel a little less hopeless. Even if primarily by way of the abundance of inappropriate conversations. Because laughter is better than sulking any day of the week. And crying in the fetal position makes my stomach extra flabby, while laughter causes me to sort of maybe use my stomach muscles. All around win!

Thank you. Seriously.