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What Being In Your 20s Feels Like
Here’s a bit of truth: I don’t feel ready to start the day until I’ve had my cup of coffee and my make-up applied. That’s my morning routine, and it makes me feel ready for the rest of the world.
But some days I don’t get to this step until noon or later.
On days like today, I wake up early but lounge around my room with my laptop on and my hair unbrushed. I putter around my kitchen making tea and looking for something to eat. I think about how I don’t feel like going outside.
On days like today, I am relaxed, but full of yearning. With the accessibility into other people’s lives made by the convenience of le internet, I spend an ungodly number of hours clicking around strangers’ journals, cv’s, interviews, websites, profiles, photos, and on and on and on. I think about all the things that they are doing. I think about all the things they have accomplished.
Then, naturally, I think about all the things I am not doing and all the things I haven’t accomplished, and am not taking steps to accomplish, and maybe am not really interested in accomplishing but would be moderately pleased if I did so just for the right to say I did so.
And time and time again my career friends reassure me that no one our age knows what they want to do with their lives (as my unemployed friends reassure me that now is my opportunity to figure out what I want to do with my life). Though, knowing that feeling this way is not unique to my situation is poor consolation.
For me, it’s not so much finding purpose. I have purpose. And it’s not so much achieving my potential. I have potential (ha).
It’s that I want more than what I was given. I want to be smarter than I am, more productive than I can, taller than I grew. I want to be me without being me.
But where is this coming from? Who is telling me that I should be more of someone else? My immigrant parents? My academic educators? The television?
Is it just my genetic disposition to be slightly dissatisfied with all that I have? Doubtful.
On days like today, when I can feel the slow start rolling out from under my comforter, I know that I will be spending the morning yearning.
I know that it’s not good for me. And I know that I can’t help it. I don’t smoke. I don’t diet. I yearn.
Maybe I don’t know what I want. But I know that I want it.
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Thanks for reminding me that growing is a process, Liem. I get so caught up in looking for the destination, that I forget I am here already. Every day, every step being a small destination in my life. I remember a conversation I had with a friend maybe five years ago in which we expressed our disparate views on personal growth: he stating that he couldn’t wait until he was “finished” growing, me countering with the desire to never actually be “finished” growing. I still believe that, and it’s good for me to remember it.
Juliane …. me too. Really. I feel this same thing so often. I’m not sure if I’m happy or sobered by the fact that it’s not just a byproduct of these ridiculous Wisconsin winters.
I think for me, it’s a lot about the guilt. You know, having the education, and the access, and everything I need, and most of the things I want, and only the most completely mundane, easily resolved blips of conflict or struggle disrupting my routine. Guilt about having the knowledge and capability to start working on the world’s bigger problems, but instead, some days, waking up and just wanting to lay in bed and watch TV or go online for hours.
Clearly, I have no real advice to proffer… just solidarity. But I’m starting to make plans now, for when I graduate from college in May- maybe it’s sort of unfair that I have one of those pre-packaged life-turning moments headed straight for me, so I have an entire institution forcing me to change my lifestyle. But nobody says you can’t graduate from…. 27, right? 
I hope you find your kickstart, if you want one.
Thanks Jenn! You know, your comment reminds me of a beautifully honest love letter I received in my early twenties. The writer told me that, though I have less to agonize about (I have also enjoyed a very fortunate life), it was that very sensitivity that endeared me to him. As he achieved academic accolades, struggled with his own unhappiness, watched me wrestle with my personal feelings of inadequacy, he was reminded how little institutions teach students about happiness. We can have the education, the access, the comfort, the privilege, the convenience, but all that doesn’t necessarily shield us from our feelings about ourselves. I don’t think you should feel guilty (really). All we can do is keep searching for the thing that drives us; and the ones who’ve found it sooner should count themselves lucky.
I’m not sure if it’s age (I feel I’ve always struggled with the same issues, and continue to), disposition, or human nature, but I do think a lot of us struggle with the idea of “accomplishment” in a society that just gets faster and constantly tells us we need to do more to succeed. Just being is not success enough, which is really unfortunate. The most I can say I’ve learned in the past year or so is to try and watch those feelings go up and down, instead of completely identifying with them. I know they will always be with me, so best to not attach and let them take me down in the process. A constant work in progress.
Thanks for putting it in perspective, Christine. Even though, looking back, I’ve felt like this continually throughout my life, I’m still under the assumption that it goes away once I get to *that* age. In high school, I thought it was college. In college, I thought it was graduation. Now, five years post-univ, I find myself looking at the thirties with relief, presuming that the sheer force of years swinging by will catapult me into self-assurance (I mean, I do feel less awkward than when I was 14 ha). I really like your point about watching such feelings go up and down instead of completely identifying with them. I need to remind myself this every now and again. Just thinking about it puts me at peace. Thank you .
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I live with that feeling, too. It’s not a desire to be better than what and who you are, so much as a need. I think that’s what’s so great about being this age; that we’re in the process of becoming the people we always imagined ourselves to be. And as frustrating as that can be sometimes, I’m always reminded that we’re still young enough for that uncertainty to be OK.
We’ll get there.