Twentysomething.

[katernater]

I don't know where my brain has been the last couple of weeks. I mean, have you ever actually felt your personality shifting? Like, suddenly you sense your preferences and focus moving from one phase of your life to another? I'm twenty-six years old and, over the last few weeks, I've really felt the gravity of my age. Not that there's a whole lot of force behind being twenty-six or anything, except that it's typically the time in your life when you're supposed to have your act together. I suppose it's because I'll be finishing my Master's degree come December and, after that, the story is largely unwritten. I don't know if I'll have a job, or a source of steady income, or any real direction other than trying to figure out what the next sixty years of my life are going to be like. Academia has always been my rudder, and now that I've largely finished what I set out to do -- obtain a higher degree and get some life experience -- I'm sort of bereft of a gameplan. What do you do when you're about to finish the only real objective you've had since you were old enough to know what objectives actually were? Do you get a new one? Find something else? Another brass ring? A few more accolades to add to the pile? Are you allowed to take it easy? Travel? Start a novel -- or a band -- that never goes anywhere?

I look at all the people in the world who have survived being twenty-six and I just marvel that they had the resilience to get on with things. That they all seemed to have a plan for the rest of their lives or, failing that, they were able to fall into a series of happy accidents that charted their late twenties and early thirties. Where is the manual for my life, and may I please get expedited shipping?

Also, in what I hope is a completely unrelated manifestation of my subconscious, I have been dreaming about babies more and more often. But not having them, or being pregnant -- I dream about people giving me babies. Like, "Oh, we're not using this infant at the moment; KATE, DO YOU WANT A BABY?" To which my dream!self replies "Sure!" and then promptly forgets about taking care of it in favour of buying shoelaces with Sean Penn or something. I do not know what this means. I do know that, if I am too lazy to keep more than two pairs of lace-up shoes in my closet, I should not be trusted with the life of another human being.

Growing up is weird.

Comments

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

Please don't feel you're the only one who's not on a perfect, seamless track that shimmers out towards the horizon. I felt exactly this way when I finished my Masters degree too (I was 22, but same diff). I'd known since I was a kid that I wanted to get a Masters - but then what? It's deeply scary.

THe upside, however, is that it's not like a railway line where one decision switches you onto a track you can never get off. If you worry just about what you want to do for the next little bit, the next sixty years will take care of themselves. And that also leaves the door open for opportunities that today you couldn't even imagine to present themselves. (They always do!)

[another-myself.livejournal.com]

You know, you hit the nail on the head right there - Growing up is weird - because it really is. There's no script or manual or Cliff's Notes to help us find our footing through it, and maybe that's part of what can be so weird, too. I think for up to a point in our lives we have guidelines and things that we follow in some respects, and then we reach an age where the waters are uncharted, the path is less straight and narrow, and we become just a little more uncertain of ourselves than we were the day or year before. And it can really be disorienting.

But I'll tell you what - if there's anyone who can figure out what's to come next, it's you. You are, and always have been, one of the brightest and most brilliant, most driven and most accomplished - and most completely talented - individuals that I know. And I use the word individual with all the meaning and heart I can possibly put behind it, because that's what you are. You don't follow anyone else's rules or path, you're your own girl - woman, at that - and you don't settle for anything less than what your strong, brave and beautiful heart tells you is the absolute best thing for you to do. And I know that's what's going to happen when it comes time for this next step of your life. I can't tell you with any certainty what the future's going to bring - and hell, I wouldn't want to, that takes the fun out of it - but I can tell you with all the certainty in my heart and soul that you're going to shine the entire way through it.

After you graduate, if time and money and circumstance permit, maybe you and I should meet up again. Take a trip, do something crazy in celebration. I'm not big on scaling mountainsides or jumping out of airplanes, but maybe we can find a happy medium that involves a lot of laughter and smiling and heart.

I love you, dear one. You're going to be better than all right.

(And the baby!dream made me giggle. I couldn't help it. XD)

[antiquitea.livejournal.com]

That's the thing about your life - its yours. You can do whatever you want. :)

I totally get everything being scary, though. I believe I'm currently right there with you. Things will work out how they're meant to, and in the end, everything will work out fine!

[dynastessa]

ohgod, this entry echos so many of my own fears. And I don't have any useful advice to you because I'm still getting and going through the same sort of thing myself atm, but you are definitely not alone.

Though ... the advice I've been given by my own friends is generally that you just can't worry about it all too much. This is a different generation than the past ones, and figuring things out is kind of what life is about anyway. So long as you're healthy and happy - in whatever form that may be - that's all that counts.

gameplan?

[affablestranger.livejournal.com]

Heck, Kate. (Not Hecate. lol) I'll be forty in September, and I still feel that way. Except the bit about the babies and shoelaces.

I know a huge amount of people, and most of them are the super goal-oriented types with plans and charts and timelines and to-do lists detailing all the things they're going to do to get to where they want to be and at what time they should arrive. If you haven't been able to tell over the years we've known one another over Teh 'Netz, I am not one of those people. That makes life difficult sometimes, seeing as how we live in a world of plans and charts and timelines and to-do lists detailing all manner of everything having to do with everything else. I just do my thing, my work, and make my accomplishments as I go. There's no real gameplan for me. I know the direction I want to go, and I do work to maintain it but remain unbegrudgingly flexible to accommodate things that happen that are unplanned, because often, for me at least, I sometimes find those days are where the fun and happiness live.

I know the way I live isn't for everyone, especially those with Big Dreams. "Happy Accidents" is more like my life. I'm just saying it's okay (IMHO) not to have the grand masterplan at the outset. I have a feeling you'll do alright anyway. :)

[bex.livejournal.com]

Oh, hon. I know exactly how you feel. That's really cliche, I know, but I do - I'll be 25 in November and I'm not even halfway through my PhD program. I have at least another three years of school stretching ahead of me. I'll be 28 by the time I graduate. I will have minimal savings, nothing like one would need to buy a house or settle down and start a family. A family is something I dearly want, and the tick of my biological clock is deafening. I'm sick of being told "Oh, don't be silly!" when I express concern that I will spend the first three decades of my life in school and then start over again with nothing right around the age I wanted to marry and have children.

Nothing is ever certain, and that is antithetical to my personality type. I need certainty; I need structure. I need a "right answer", because I think I thrive on making other people happy, pressing the right buttons, jumping through the right hoops. It's pathetic, but there you go.

Sometimes I think of dropping everything and running away - perhaps not permanently, but at least on a vacation. But... time! Money! Other commitments and responsibilities! If I drop out of school right now, I would lose my graduate assistantship, which is all the money I live on. If I quit my job (assistantship), I will not be able to afford school, as the assistantship includes a tuition waiver that currently pays all my school fees. I either keep going, or lose everything. Guess which option is more feasible?

So I keep going. Slogging along. Hoping there'll be a job at the end of all this - not to mention a similar job for my boyfriend, who is at the same place in the program and with whom I live and share pets and plan to marry someday.

Mostly, I stew and fret and hope that it all comes together somehow.

I don't know what the point of all this was, other than to just say: I understand, and you are not alone.

[heddaberry.livejournal.com]

Someone once told me that dreaming about babies signals rebirth. Possibly very apropos of your current state of mind as you feel that one thing is ending and you're not sure what comes next. Other people giving you babies and you forgetting about them could signal that you should beware of other people trying to force their ideas for the rest of your life onto you. When you're ready, or when life is ready, you'll know where you're going! *HUGS*

[smurphy487.livejournal.com]

Where is the manual for my life, and may I please get expedited shipping?

I am still waiting for mine.

[highlander_ii]

pssst - there is no manual... or, if there is, my copy got lost in the mail. I *still* have no idea what I want to be when I grow up... really, no clue. And I always hated that question in school, b/c while everyone else always had answers - fireman, president, competitive eater - I never had any idea at all. None. Oh, sure, I put answers down, but looking at them, I was never sure that was what I *really* wanted to do. And yes, that includes the law thing that I'm still pondering. I really don't have the first damned clue. Not sure I ever will. And, in a way, that really sucks, b/c I don't think 'doing nothing' is all that great a way to make money. :(

[vintagememories.livejournal.com]

I'm 24 and although that isn't old really, and I know it isn't, I can't help but sometimes feel old, especially when like I'm probably one of about 5 or 6 girls from my year at school that hasn't either gotten married or had children or both as soon as they left school, or it feels like it.

And also I feel it when I think I should be at a certain part in my life or something, or I should be doing stuff other people my age are doing, though not the exact same things, but I dunno, like with my job I really need to change careers because I don't like what I'm doing now, I do like it, I just don't love it.

Sorry for the ramble, but I had to comment. But I know what you mean, even if I am two years younger, I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like that.