“I should feel something!” I thought to myself as I rode the train up to San Francisco. After all, I am moving to San Francisco and working at a startup. That’s what I have been dreaming about for the last two years! But why can't I be excited? I had my entire life for the next two months packed into a duffel bag, backpack and camera bag. I was going to be staying at two different hostels and meeting new people left and right. All signs pointed to my next two months being full of adventure, but with each passing city that brought me closer to this new life, I continued to feel nothing.
On the train, thinking about the future actually became a depressing endeavor. Graduating and transitioning into a full time job instead of an internship made me feel inadequate, especially when I compared myself to friends who will be working at prestigious companies. Moving to San Francisco felt like entering life purgatory, where I was stuck between college and the real world.
I wish I could say that things got better when I arrived at the city, but they did not. Upon entering the hostel, I was expecting to be eagerly greeted by staff and fellow hostellers. Instead, I was left standing outside a locked door and I had to knock and be let in by the janitor. I then made eye contact with the two people sitting by the door and was offered no greeting. They stared back blankly at me, and the silence only broke when I asked them how I could check in. Only then did one of them get up and looked for Pierre, the staff member on duty.
Pierre checked me in and gave me a tour of Startup House. The tour gave me quite a shock as Startup House fell far below my expectations. Three months ago, I watched a video tour of the hostel under construction and now while walking around and seeing the disassembled furniture, cracked windows, dangling wires and exposed piping everywhere, it did not seem much progress was made. The worst part was seeing a bunch of people with headphones on staring at laptop screens, far from the eager and friendly hostellers I was expecting. Doubts about whether I had made the right choice began creeping into my mind. At one point, I even considered throwing in the towel, demanding a refund and moving back home.
After the initial panic, I fought back my feelings of doubt, recommitted to my hostel plan and started exploring the surrounding area. While walking the streets, the loneliness started creeping in and it dawned on me that I had no friends in San Francisco, just a few acquaintances. Suddenly the city seemed much less inviting and my thoughts once again turned towards home. “At least I would have family” I rationalized.
I walked around in circles for at least two hours before settling on a place to eat and while munching on a burger alone, I thought back to my first day in Shanghai, two years ago. Scared, unable to communicate and feeling completely alone, my first day in Shanghai was anything but fun. If it had not been for a pretty girl who tried her best to translate for me and then took me out to dinner, I do not know how I would have gotten through my first night in Shanghai. Snapping back to my lonely reality, where even though I was just an hour away from home and had no problems communicating with people around me, I somehow felt just as helpless as that first night in Shanghai. At that moment, I would have traded all of those comforts for another Jeanni to take me to dinner.
Feeling dejected after dinner, I wandered around looking for a bar that was showing the UFC fight and failed miserably. Feeling as if nothing about my first day in San Francisco was working out, I walked back to the hostel, where I got my first “Hello” from another hostller. Jonathan, the hosteller who greeted me, was no pretty girl, but at that point of the night I was going to take anything I could get. Immediately I struck up a conversation and even made plans to see the Pride parade with him the next day.
Things were finally starting to look up.
