There's No Right Way To Do It

We've already established that your twenties are hard-- and largely undiscussed. However I would go further and argue that of your twenties, your mid-twenties are the hardest. Everyone has an idea of who they want you to be, but the reality is you have no clue who you want to be.

Your mom wants you to "meet someone nice" and start producing grandchildren as soons a humanly possible. Your dad, the more sensible of the two, wants you to find a good job and start saving money. Your friends want you to move to a trendy city with them so you can play Girls, endlessly and wittily recounting the drama of your own 20something lives (dibs on being Hannah).

Your student loans want you to get a move on things so they can stop collecting interest (considerate as they are). And finally the whole universe, like your mother, wants you to get engaged so that you too can join the legions of 20somethings getting engaged daily on Facebook (thank goodness Facebook invented the hide button, because I don't think my fragile single heart could take another "got engaged" story on my mini-feed). 

And you, oh master of the universe, straight-B+, recently graduated, newly hatched adult— what would you like to be?

"Oh me? How kind of you to ask.Well, I guess what I really want is just to be happy (and not broke, if at all possible)." 

"Happiness is nice, but it can't pay the rent," says the omniscient voice of your inner narrator (who strangely enough sounds like a cross between your dad and the great and powerful Oz). 

And this is where the panic sets in for the mid-twentysomething— the moment you realize you have to support yourself while trying to be happy— at the same time. 

Here is where my opinion may differ from your father/mother's, because personally I take huge issue with the idea that there is a set way of doing things. Yes, like every good American, I believe in hard work, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and all the rest, because in the end there is no substitute for some good old-fashioned hard work. What I don't believe however is that there is a "right way" of getting to where you want to be, especially for our generation.

When our grandparents were young their goal was to work for one company all their life. Growing up in the shadow of the First World War and in the midst of the Second had them clinging to stability for dear life. Our parents, hippies, yuppies and "dancing queens" still wanted stability, but with a little more freedom. They wanted one career, but were content to work for more than one company over the course of their lifetime. And now as Mikey would say whilst down in a cave with the rest of the Goonies, "It's our time, down here it's our time."

So what happens when a generation of millennials grow up—with our short attention spans, iPhones permanently implanted into our palms, and adventure constantly on our minds. We are what they're calling the "four-year career generation"— we don't want to work for four companies— we want to have a completely new career every four years. We want to be graphic designers, nurses, bloggers and event planners. Why not, right? 

Insert your parents' heads exploding as you explain to them that you are essentially a traveling bard, wandering around the globe singing tales of adventures past, present, and those to come. In your mind you are Kerouac, in theirs you are one step above a hobo. You are a college-graduated hobo with no sense of direction. "This is what the internet does to children," they think as they reevaluate how they raised you. 

But the funny thing is, though most days you feel 85.9% sure that you'll never get your ish together and not end up with three to five cats companions in your twilight years (your older years, not your vampire love years) at the end of the day you aren't that worried. Because what your parents, grandparents and mentors don't seem to fully understand is the fact that though it may not seem like you've got everything all together— you're passionate, and deeply so. In fact, most days it feels like your soul is crawling out of your body waiting to become the fully self-actualized version of yourself that has been sitting in the forefront of your mind since the very first time you realized you got to decide who you wanted to be. 

All this to say, there is no right way to go about it, no way to safely arrive at the destination of happiness. Maybe happiness isn't a destination, but simply a way of journeying. So don't let the people in your life tell you you're doing it wrong. Don't fret if you're not a CEO yet, engaged, or even remotely close to having all your dreams come to fruition. This is your journey, not anyone else's, and to be frank, the people who have left the biggest mark on this world rarely did so by following the rules.