A field guide to growing up without growing apart
The condition of the month this month features another millennial figure, the legendary singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Born in 1989, Taylor has been growing up alongside us. Like the authors of the Twenty-Something Condition she has had to weather the transition from early twenties to mid-twenties, and all […]
For this month’s COTM I’ve asked my fellow princesses how they feel about the words YES and NO. Which one do we say more of and how has that changed over our lifetime? This is a fundamental question I’ve thought a lot about in the […]
I don’t know if I’m happy.
I’ve been working really hard the last few months at a new job and it feels really good. I like the concept of the company; I like the odds that it will succeed – setting me up with some great experience in the meantime. I like that I feel appreciated and I like a lot of the people I work with, and the ones I don’t love I still tolerate just fine. I like that I’m supporting myself and have a respectable answer to the ‘what are you doing with your life’ question all 20somethings fear.
But I’m also really freaked out that what I’m doing isn’t worth it. I don’t like that I’m working what feels like way too much for a cause I’m excited about but not in absolute love with. I don’t like that all my other passions and projects and pursuits have fallen by the wayside. I don’t like always feeling guilty when I’m not working, and feeling blocked when I try to sit down and force myself to do the creative fun things I used to cherish. I miss writing on this blog, scrapbooking, photography, general reading, hiking, and spontaneous adventures. I miss doing things for myself – not always having to justify taking time away by linking it to some person in my life.
I don’t like that my boss has a really cynical outlook on the world. It’s been really difficult to be with him as much as I have been and be the naïve, optimistic person to his sometimes careless and cruel one. He’s never mean to me and has continued to be very generous and complimentary for the hard work I do and the positivity I bring to the table, but it wares on me to spend time with someone who yells at random customer service people on the phone regularly and makes split second decisions without consideration.
I love that I’ve gotten to be so close with my parents and brother in the last few years of living near them, and that now my close friend’s younger brother is going to move in with him. I love that I have so many people that I get to care about, but I hate that I don’t talk to most of them very much anymore. I can’t remember the last time I skyped with any of you princesses and my high school friends feel further and further away every day. The people I do spend time with are my coworkers and roommates – all of whom I care about and get along with well, but don’t make me a better person. I miss being inspired daily by incredible people, and while I know they’re still out there and I still have so many in my life, being busy makes it harder to see them. Some days lately the people I feel most connected to are the strangers who respond to my work emails with jokes or kindness.
I know it doesn’t do a ton of good to worry about the future, especially when I know a drastic change isn’t feasible right now, but time moves quickly and these minutes of my life are precious. If I’m not happy shouldn’t I at least have plans to change it? I’m not going to quit my job in the next 6 months, it’s too great of an opportunity to waste and I’m not going to break my lease or make a ton of new friends because I don’t have a ton of money, time or capacity to give. But it makes me a little sad to know I’m not where I want to be right now, and yet I’m also not ready to make a change.
The next few months are busy, with work and weddings and river trips and more work, so the time will go quickly and most days I’ll feel glad to be where I am. But today listening to melancholy music I wish I was free to become someone else, or even just to populate my current world with slightly better situations.
Recap: This month has been busy, and I’m not sure exactly what to write about in this post. I’ve learned a ton and felt both confused and secure in equal parts, but in all life is good and I’m glad to be where I am. Mostly. […]
Two weeks ago I wasn’t doing well. I was unemployed, broke, and completely at a loss of what to do next. My confidence was dismal from all the job rejections and my roommate had just gotten a dog even though she knew I was allergic. […]
Onward and upward!
We’ve loved every minute of our time at wordpress.com but in honor of the new year (2015 already?! SERIOUSLY?!) we’ve upgraded to an official site!
www.twentysomethingcondition.com
If you’re already following us your subscription should be transferred automatically and if not please turn your head slightly to your right and subscribe here. Don’t grow up without us! We’ve made a few changes but mostly we’ve stayed the same, ringing in this new era of our lives with a whole lot of exactly what came before.
The first half of our twenties is over, who knows how our Twenty Something Condition will change in the coming years… See you on the flip side!
You can follow us on twitter and bloglovin as well:
It seems like everything always changes on my birthday. In my first year of college my birthday was the day that really solidified my friendship with the naughty princesses and made Seattle seem like home. On my birthday the year after I decided to apply […]
So I got jealous this week. For our annual family and friend river trip we went to Desolation Canyon, spending 6 days rafting and drinking with a group of people I dearly love. But when I should have been relaxing and enjoying the phone-free natural […]
As 20somethings we’re no strangers to failure, often finding ourselves paralyzed by indecision or blinded by ambition. We cringe daily at what we didn’t do and what we haven’t become, what we said and what we believed and yet, as much as we stumble we still find ourselves on the other side a little different. No matter how much we do or don’t do we still grow up every day. Isn’t it possible that for ever step back we take we take two steps forward?
Over the last year I’ve taken a lot of steps backwards. I quit a great office job, lived with my parents, lost touch with friends, and spent an unnecessary $10,000. But I also got to travel Europe for 5 months, something that I’d always wanted to do and would have likely regretted missing out on. Sure, my life isn’t moving as linearly forward as it could be right now, but it is still moving forward. Every step forward that I had to give up this year was worth the one big step in a slightly different direction. For everything I’ve lost I’ve grown closer to the person I want to become.
Now that I’m back in the USA I’ve had to make a few more decisions, mainly whether or not to throw myself back on the office job track I was on before this “set back.” As of last week I bought myself a bit more time to figure things out by taking a summer job that in many ways is the biggest step back I’ve taken so far.
For the rest of the summer I’ll be working at the ski resort I grew up on, manning the carousel and the mini golf shack, helping children rock climb and adults get safely down roller coasters. With a smile and tons of sunscreen I take tickets and load ski lifts, answer questions and deal with bumps and bruises. The work is dirty and our shifts are long (12 hours on Sat and Sunday), and my coworkers are college kids and ski bums, uneducated and unmotivated. On paper, living with my parents and working for $9 an hour at a job that I could have gotten 10 years ago is a pretty significant step back.
But as far back as this step seems, in reality this job is perfect for me right now. They hired me immediately, putting me to work only two days after I applied. My hours are flexible and I live less than 15 minutes away from the resort and coworkers I’m already familiar with. My boss only shrugged when I told him that I’d want to miss 17 days of work in August for family vacations. When I get home I feel accomplished, exhausted and stronger from working outside and building callouses. And to top it off, everyone knows this it isn’t permanent.
Everyone I meet has stories of what they’ll do in the winter, where they’re going in just a few more weeks. For the first time in a long time I don’t feel guilty for working somewhere I know I won’t stay. And after traveling every day for the last 5 months, now I have a few weeks to catch up on projects and focus on what I want to do next and how to make it happen.
I’ve taken a lot of steps backwards this year, but I’ve also taken more steps forward, choosing to do what I want and need to do instead of what I think will look good on my resume. I’m happy. And even though I’m overqualified for this job, doesn’t mean it isn’t the best thing for me to do right now. I’m grateful for it and every step backwards I’ve taken in my life, because really, they’re steps forward too.
The idea of a Bucket list has never really appealed to me. It seems like making a list of things to do before you die is so definitive and constricting. What happens if you die without completing it? What happens if you complete it and […]
GUYS! WHEN DID JUNE HAPPEN?! I feel like I always say this but, seriously, has spring gone by too fast for anyone else? Now that June is here and my Grand Euro Adventure is coming to a close I’m really feeling the pressure of heading […]
I hate that depression is a thing.
Last week when Cindy posted about possibly being depressed I cringed a bit at the word, feeling fairly confident that Cindy’s low mood was just that, a bit of a down time in a lifetime of millions of other emotions. To call it depression is to align it with the ‘real’ kind that brings to mind drugs, shrinks and so many other dark connotations. Surely Cindy isn’t THAT bad, I told myself, real depression is a chemical, biological imbalance that definitely isn’t her.
But what is ‘real depression’ and who has it anyway? I have countless friends who’ve told my they’re depressed over the years, ignoring me as I advised against drugs and insisted we all get low sometimes. I tell myself they’re over reacting as they go to weekly counseling sessions and post melancholy facebook status updates, told them to drink more water and get more exercise as they pulled away from the world. I’ve never quite believed they were really depressed, categorizing them more as bored, lazy, unsure, insecure, scared or just plain 20-something. Depression is for other people, not for smart, capable people who are just in a rut.
But yesterday my brother told me he’s been at the lowest part of his life for the last few weeks, that he’s really felt this badly for a few years now but has been keeping it hidden, that he doesn’t trust another person in the entire world with all the darkness that is the real him.
At first I reacted like I always do when people I know to be fully capable and functioning humans tell me they’re more than unhappy, reminding him everyone fails classes and gets angry with the world sometimes and that things can change anytime. Feeling sad today doesn’t mean you have to be sad tomorrow or that you have a problem that needs external fixing. Categorizing yourself as something doesn’t help other than to give you an excuse to act a certain way. But this only made him angry at me for calling his problem common, though he countered with the very common argument that everyone else seems to have their lives figured out.
We all obviously don’t, just from reading this blog I’m sure you can see four fine examples of people still figuring it out, and in truth just a few hours before talking to my brother yesterday I was thinking to myself that I miss being joyful, that in the last few months I’ve forgotten how to really laugh.
I’ve been traveling Europe for two months now and while I’ve seen and done a ridiculous amount of wonderful things, I haven’t been particularly happy. Moving from place to place so often I’ve felt much more lonely, insecure, reserved, grumpy, and disappointed than I expected. Finding myself jealous of the giddy and loud school groups who tromp through museums and train stations without any regard for anything except their own immediate joy. There have been many other times I’ve felt grateful and impressed and content and in awe and confident and excited and relieved and proud on this adventure, but rarely have I felt really blissfully happy and while I wouldn’t ever call myself depressed, I would say that I’ve been down, in a rut that I will someday shake.
When I realized this and tried to snap out of my melancholy mood I just couldn’t quite get there, ending up more frustrated than happy, worried that I wouldn’t figure out how to be the person I wanted to be anytime soon. Not that I’m stopping to think about it I can see how easy it would be to let a small scale issue like that get exaggerated into a larger one, how scary it would be to feel like you have no control over your emotions or moods over weeks and months and years. Maybe depression like that would require some extra help and I’ve been doing more harm than good by discouraging the word.
After listening to my brother say he was just sick of feeling this way I started to consider that maybe getting a little outside assistance wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, that even though I know he doesn’t have ‘real depression’ he may have some mild form of it that would pass faster with a little help.
I still think his is mostly situational (he’s a 20 something male with a poor dating record, bad grades, no real career goals and mediocre friends); if even one of these variables improved I think he’d be fine, working through it until more things fall into place. It would be a shame if he got addicted to antidepressants or convinced he had a lasting problem just because of these changeable things.
But maybe I’ve been the wrong one all along and depression isn’t only a biological emotional state that you are powerless to change. Maybe depression isn’t as scary as all that, maybe all these people are just ‘down’ like I’ve been and instead of getting through it in the ways I do, they’re taking other paths. We’re all different, maybe it makes sense that all of our depressions are different too.
Blah, I hate that people get sad and that we have a term for it that somehow makes it okay and terrible all at once.
In the meantime I’m going to keep sucking it up and doing my best to learn and grow and be grateful and joyful. I’m going to take each day as it comes, assuming it to be entirely independent of the day before and in no way indicative of what is to come. And I’m going to do what I can to help my brother because I know the things that make me feel better (Thinking about more than just myself, going outside and interacting with the world) can’t hurt.