" title="Juliane Huang"> Juliane Huang

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.

Men Aplenty, Jobs None.

“…and he’s only 29!”
“You should date him.”

…

I can’t find a job for the life of me, though lately, I have not been looking.  I scrape by on the very little income I make each month, budgeting the hell out of my wallet and going to museums only when admission is free.

Initially, not having a full-time job felt like a gaping hole in my personal identity and I filled every one of my unemployed days searching uninspired listings and sending out uninspired cover letters.  I eventually found a match with a part-time job to throw into the pile of my other part-time jobs and have been unsteadily riding the poor wave since.

To be fair, I really enjoy my part-times and if I could somehow transition just one them into a full-time, this girl would be all set for glory and future-planning.  Unfortunately, as we’re all painfully aware, that won’t happen or happen anytime soon.

And yet, despite HR directors and headhunters being wildly unimpressed with my modest attributes, friends and acquaintances are all about trying to get me to meet their single friends.  I’ve somehow located the secret passageway to meeting men and have unwittingly snuggled in rather comfortably.  Want to introduce me?  Sure why not.  Think we should hang out sometime?  Give me a call.

Though, like a job, I am not really looking (wait, is that where in my appeal lies?).  I’ve gotten involved in a local free clinic, signed up for a volunteer health care excursion, ran a half-marathon, put my friends and family first, read the books I wanted to read.  With all the downer recession news stories, no one told me that life can be fucking awesome not having a full-time gig.  My time is my own!  I do what I want!  Maintaining a good credit score, psh, for suckers.

What I’m saying is, I’m still busy despite being without.  And I’ve gotten used to the luxury of taking actions that interest and challenge me and help me grow.

What if a job or a man throws a wrench in all of that?  I can stay with bad jobs much too long and love bad men much too deeply.  It’s just who I am.