I was featured on Young & Twenty and was told I could share the post on my own personal blog! The link to it is here if you want to see the rest of the collection.
I’m turning 22 next week.
I just graduated from college. I’m jobless – and to be honest – really unsure of where I’m going to end up.
I read just about every advice blog post put in front of me, and just about all of them are trying to tell me to drop everything and go on some life changing adventure.
Though you didn’t sit down and plan it this way, you have a timeline. A start here date. There’s a post circling the internet talking about “if I’m not engaged by 25 I might as well give up” or “if I don’t get the stable job right out of college my entire plans change”. We have a countdown, a stop watch ticking that seems to get faster as each birthday passes. The dreaded “I’m 20 and I haven’t done anything with my life”.
People have been talking about this a lot in our generation, and we’re so stressed out about it that quarter life crisis is a coined term. We’re not 100% sure where our timeline came from or when it formed, but it’s there. So how do we deal with… not making it in time?
I was talking to a friend recently about how dangerous it is to set dates for yourself. I tried to explain that it was good for me because it gave me goals. It gave me things to work towards too. She shook her head, and said that putting end dates on your goals, just gave you disappointment. She was right.
How much time do we spend stressing out about not being far enough along? Goals are healthy, and we should always have set ones, but you have to give them room to change. One of the hardest lessons to learn is that even though you don’t get what you want you will get what you need. Life throws curve balls, and timelines are only helpful if life had a perfect pitch. Drop the dates, set goals in steps not big pictures, and remember that nothing is late, you don’t miss out on anything you’re supposed to have.
This past semester has been entirely freeing and all together soul finding. I realize that’s not really a term, but I’ve really come into myself, and it had nothing to do with my classes, in fact, I’m not a hundred percent sure what triggered it. All I know is that I’ve figured out my passions, I’ve sorted out my goals, and I’ve learned what makes me happy.
Honestly I think the key to happiness isn’t as hard as people try to make it, but it’s a process. It has a lot to do with the people around you, the way you spend your time, and what you do with your livelihood. It’s something we all have to figure out, a kind of self awareness that won’t come to us until we’re ready. I’m early on this boat, from what I can tell. Many of my friends are lost in the process of being an adult in their early twenties, thinking about rules, careers, and long term choices which they might find to be short term after all. We’re trying to hard and we’re not trying hard enough.
Let me elaborate. We come up with an idea when were younger, whether it be in 6th grade or 11th, that this is what we want out of life, that this is what success looks like. Sometimes it has to do with money, other times it has to do with how many cities we can visit before we die, but it’s always restrictive in someway or another, because once we have it we only have the one path, and when that path ends up being a grown over once we start down it, well, that’s when the problems start. It’s been coined the quarter life crisis. The “what the hell am I doing with my life?!”. It’s in this way that we’re trying to hard. People like blaming society for this, but in reality we form all our opinions, so while it’s been influenced by the “american dream” and the successes and failure stories our parents raised us on, it ends up on our shoulders. Only we can stop trying to reach our ideal idea of success. You need to lose it, throw it to the side.
When I said we aren’t trying enough I was referring to our generations constant downplaying of themselves. The “I can’t achieve that” or “I’m not good enough”. We pigeonhole ourselves by downplaying our abilities, our talents. Or, by thinking our abilities and talents are good enough when they come to our idea of the perfect success.
It’s a constant, we forget that nothing is permanent, not money, jobs, even relationships. Though I’m not knocking the idea of a soul mate here, I believe in love and that they can last for a lifetime. But people die. We retire or get fired. Money means nothing when your in the ground. You don’t know how nice of a coffin your is. People travel the world on a dime.
Now, happiness is knowing what makes you happy. Saying that we all nod, because we all know what makes us happy, chocolate and college basketball, but we have to go one past that, we have to force ourselves to do the things we enjoy when we don’t feel like doing anything, and we have to above all, remove the pressure. If you’re constantly looking for happiness your not ever going to find enough for your liking. It’s when you start learning to be content in the ups and downs. Life’s a cycle of ups and downs, we need the downs to appreciate the ups and we need the downs to teach us the hard lessons. Neither the ups or downs are permanent. You have to learn how to live with life as it comes, not as you imagine it.
I guess learning how to be happy has a lot with accepting that life will never fit into our ideals, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be damn amazing. Learn what makes you happy and do it. Learn all you can no matter were you are learning, and force yourself to do what you love most, even if you don’t have much time.
Anna Down South 