Whomever said your twenties are easy should be shot.
Seriously.
If you’ve struggled through this decade of transition, uncertainty, and unending questions, you’re not alone – the All Groan Up mantra.
Which of these twentysomething problems can you relate to the most? (And amidst the problems there are some twenty-something answers sprinkled in-between).
1. You can’t complain to anyone older about your problems because they’ll just say, “You’re in your twenties, what kind of problems can you have?”
2. Due to years of neglect and abuse, your metabolism begins its official, in-your-face mutiny. And it tries to convince your knees, lower back, and thyroid to join in the fight.
3. You have your bachelors degree, yet are barely able to afford the college loan payments with your job that you’re pretty sure you could’ve done with your high school diploma. So now you’ve began taking out loans for your masters…
It just makes sense.
4. You still feel the pressure to make the absolute most of a Friday and Saturday night, when all your body and soul wants to do is curl up on the couch with your cat. So you end up begrudgingly going out for a few hours. And once you’ve taken the pictures you feel are “social media worthy,” you rush home to your real plans.
5. The fact that all our 1,343 photos on our phone are now filtered through the mental lens of “Is this social media worthy?”
6. You’re not where you want to be, but you’re not quite sure where you want to go.
7. You used to hate coffee, but now you drink it when you’re:
A. Tired
B. Hungover
C. Hungry, but trying to fight against Metabolism and its latest attack.
D. Drained by six hours of doing very little at your desk so you chug coffee to remind yourself that you’re still alive.
E. You’re craving something sweet at 2pm and use coffee as a cover to pretty much drink a cup of Crème Brule creamer. If your sweet tooth was in a pinch, you’d probably drink creamer straight if it was socially acceptable.
8. Spending a little too much extra-curricular hours with co-workers. Unwinding with co-workers is one thing. Really unwinding with co-workers is another.
The office is the bizarro Vegas. Whatever happens outside of the office, WILL NOT stay outside of the office.
9. Wanting a Whole Foods diet on a Burger King budget. Whole Foods is not a store, it’s a lifestyle. And I personally am not sure I have the wallet, walk, or haircut to pull it off.
10. Losing touch with all the friends you swore you’d never lose touch with.
11. Being stuck in between growing and grown, not yet sure if you’re a kid or an adult.
12. Being stuck in the gap of a big dream and your current not-so-big job. Feeling stuck between the pull of the future and the nostalgia of the past.
It took me a while to learn that the life of a successful twentysomething is not about choosing between chasing your dreams and sacrificing them to pay the bills. It’s about doing both at the same time. Chasing your dreams in the fringes of your day while you do your best in the job you are in.
13. Sharing one fridge with four roommates.
14. Sharing one fridge with two parents. Again. And having them give you chores. Again.
15. All.the.lostness.
But isn’t being lost and exploring pretty much the same thing? The main difference is that explorers get lost on purpose, with purpose. They have a plan and people alongside them when the obstacles become too great.
In your twenties don’t be afraid to get lost on purpose, with purpose.
“Being lost might be the exact place you will be found.” – 101 Secrets for your Twenties
16. Figuring out how to answer, “so…what do you do” for the 1,346th time, when “what you do” is so…not that spectacular.
17. All.the.stereotypes.
Why is it that stereotyping certain topics is completely taboo, yet stereotyping an entire generation is all the rage? Stereotype based on race, gender, religion, and sex, and you’re getting hate mail. Stereotype based on age and you’re getting the front page of Time magazine.
18. Hourly Information Explosions. Headline Hand-Grenades. Email-Uzi’s. Advertising Atom Bombs. An all-out war for your attention and time with info that will do nothing to add value to your life. We become obsessed with everything happening out there that we neglect understanding what’s going on in us.
19. Desperately searching for the answers, without knowing the right questions.
20. Starting a blog in hopes it will help you clarify some of your problems, not really caring if anyone reads it. Then kind of hoping someone will read it. Then checking your blog stats once a day. Then once an hour. Then refreshing your screen every fifteen minutes hoping someone will leave just one comment. I mean ONE COMMENT, how hard could it be?!…Seriously, my friends suck, no one cares what I have to say, gosh I hate blogging…
21. All.the.quarter.life.crisis-essses.
Quarter-Life Crisis (def): Ample anxiety/fear/confusion over the direction and quality of one’s life that makes you feel like you’re getting the insides ripped out of you like crab legs at a Las Vegas buffet
Wondering if you’re having one? Here’s 25 signs you’re having a quarter-life crisis and then seven cures for it.
22. Getting wrapped up in a get-rich-quick scheme, then realizing that get-rich-quick takes about 10 years of hard work to make happen.
23. Traveling to find the answers, then coming home and realizing you have more questions than when you began.
24. Netflix. It’s hard chasing your dreams if you’re busy watching other people chase theirs.
25. Oh and just the small pressure of figuring out your career, where you’re going to live, marriage, faith, identity, etc. – and feeling like you have to have it wrapped up neatly in a red little bow before you exit the decade.
26. The overwhelming feeling that the best plan you can make in your twenties is to plan to keep making new plans.
*Comment* =)
This is great. 13 made me laugh, because, oh my, that can be rough.
Ha. Thanks Gabrielle! Yes I rocked the one fridge, four other roommates for three years after college. Trying to find your food was like Indiana Jones searching for the Holy Grail.
This is one of the best things I’ve read on the WWW lately.
I practically sprain my neck nodding in agreement and relief that someone gets it.
Of course the bit about blogging meant I just had to leave a comment.
Thank you for writing this!
Thanks Anne! Much appreciated. It’s always nice to know that we’re all rocking in the same boat with the same waves.
Sadly, I can fully relate to all of them but #7. Lucky for me I haven’t become addicted to coffee, in fact I’ve never had a full cup!
Wow Phillip I don’t know how you do it. Coffee was my cubicle life-blood
Well it helps when you grew up in Utah where coffee is shunned for the most part! I rely on Coke and Mello Yello!
I can relate to a lot of these but right now mostly #3, the job I have now I could have done after high school. I can afford my student loans but with the cost of good and beer and shopping, it definitely comes close to not being able to afford them. Ha. I’m going back for my masters, because I have no passion to do anything. So hesitantly going back to school hoping that this will be the winner!?? Haha!
Katherine I can definitely relate! I went back to get my masters as a way to start again and see if this time I get could it right! I think the most important piece of receiving a masters is the networking you can do there. A classmate introduced me to a job opportunity and the rest was history.
*food
“The overwhelming feeling that the best plan you can make in your twenties is to plan to keep making new plans” – This is the biggest problem I have had during the past few years.
The rest of your list is very true as well.
I enjoy this statement immensely: “Whole Foods is not a store, it’s a lifestyle. And I personally am not sure I have the wallet, walk, or haircut to pull it off.” Great list — I find it encouraging that I felt many of these in my early twenties but am feeling more secure as I get closer to the big 3-0.
Thanks Kendal!
1, 4, 6, 7, , 10, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 is so spot on you may have been spying on me, 21, 23 and 25. Need I say more?
Ha…thanks Estrela!
your book and website have been a lifesaver for me recently!!!! i was beginning to feel trapped and alone. your book brought me so much comfort, and of course, laughter! THANK YOU!
Awesome Stacy! Thank you for taking the time to let me know and encouraging me in return!
Oh so true. One of the biggest things I’ve learned/am learning in my 20s is to stop trying to plan out my life, since it seems to keep ending up different than I’d thought it would. Funny how God’s plans are higher than ours, huh? 🙂 Encouraging post though, to remember that these are common struggles. Thanks Paul!
Thanks Jeremiah for sharing these great thoughts! Yep, I often say the best plan we can make in our twenties is plan to make new plans.
I can relate to so many of the topics here at all groan up its like someone can see right through me where I thought I WAS terminally unique. Every time I have a quarter life crisis this saves my butt from getting lost fare beyond purpose or exploration. Im 23, in my experience its true- you get your BA and think all of a sudden magically things are going to work out post graduation- and if not in the first week, at least in the second. I also might add that I felt- who needs plans after college?! The world is now mine! All of it.! Now that all that hard studying work and world travel is over with and the career part is just waiting for me to arrive, that perfectly codependent relationship I never had time for is looking like a great idea…and…now it also the time to- PARTY!…Hard, after all, its time to “celebrate” going from preschool to college graduate in 16 years is work, everyone is moving away again it’s time to play … while visiting my hometown I fell madly in “love” with the first old friend I found falling off the barstool at the local spot , we decided on the ski lift it was time to move in with his dad in California and start our new life together full of love, and careers, and all the time and space to drink that one could dream of (aside from Thursdays, weekends, holidays, and right before class presentations there was no time for that in my college schedule). Madly is probably an understatement, after about three weeks in California the illusion that this was all going to go as expected wore off. “Love” went out the window so I figured the next best thing was to move back to college town and become a stripper so I could start paying off all the debt I mindlessly acquired while in college assuming I was going to have a six figure paycheck, the love life I dreamed of, and all that jazz welcoming me to the 15th floor. Again- who needs plans or advice when they’re freshly 22, knowledgeable of all things, and there’s all this love and security, and money just waiting up there.
Yet again, the unexpected happened- now the alcohol had stopped working and I woke up to find myself living in the room that smells like pee with 1’s & 20’s falling out of my underwear when I got up to take a shower long after noon. Romancing the idea of careers and family had been replaced with suicidal ideation, fear of certainly impending doom, and DT’s (likely as a side effect of combining alcohol & depression- 😉 like peas and carrots). I just barely crawled out of that room with the help of some newfound friends and into rehab. A few months later, I was visiting family, avoiding my recent ex who had also returned, trying to keep doing things differently, one day at a time-that fun stuff. Later that week, unexpectedly, he died at 24. I was freshly 23 and knew that going back to the room I lived in prior would not be worth it, but hanging in the new room to see what the rest of my 20s could be like felt right. It isn’t easy, on came the questions-what is life all about? How and where do I want to be? Anywhere but “here,” and not so sure where “there” is yet; seems to be the question of 23 and ½ for me. Thankfully this reminds me that it’s an exploration and its not supposed to be all wrapped up with a red bow, and that planning to make new plans and connecting with others is really best way to carry on through the waves of reality. Thanks allgroanup for holding space and providing a place where we can get together and talk about it!
This is so scarily accurate it is not funny! REALLY GREAT insight into the minds of 20 somethings, I especially resonate with number #1, #12 and #18 and after starting a blog trying to help 20 something women overcome our quarterlife crises, I experienced a little of 20 as well (luckily that are has calmed down, was running my internet bill SO high…)
Definitely bookmarking this blog, thanks for being the kind of 20 something I tell people a) I aspire to be and b) are actually out there. Most of them just think we are bums who sit on our parents couches and watch reruns of Charmed. And while a portion of us do, they must not be representative of the few, like you, looking to make a difference to a generation that has lost its way.
Kudos!
Sarah
Awesome Sarah! Thank you very much for these kind words. Yes, I love our generation and I am constantly amazed by the people who are out there working hard and working for good. Excited for the success you’re experiencing with your site and the way you’re resonating with your readers. Glad we could connect!
I’ve been feeling lost for a while now and I’ve just stumbled upon your website; It’s comforting in my time of transition and puts a smile on my face. Thanks!
So good to find someone who feels the same!!!! I’ve been blogging about my twenties, feel free to look at my journey so far http://www.thediaryofathug.blogspot.co.uk I look forward to reading more from you!! xx