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

[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)