If you ask any person currently in their twenties how their life is now compared to what they pictured it would be like 5 years ago, you’d pretty much get a different variation of the same answer from every person asked- “It’s not what I expected.” For all the different names of this time of life (Twentysomething, Emerging Adulthood, Quarterlife), it should pretty much be called the “It’s not what I expected” decade. If you ask a student who’s about ready to leave college where they see themselves a few years after they graduate, they’ll give you a set of expectations, usually pretty specific ones with an age range attached to them. “I expect to be married by 26,” “I expect to be a junior executive making a six-figure salary by 28,” “I expect to have a PhD by 30,” and so on. Every individual has different expectations but for just about everyone, things change. Oftentimes life gets in the way, throws us a curveball and tends to turn those expectations askew. For most people in their twenties, it’s the first time experiencing true independence and often this new freedom comes with a lot of unexpected (sometimes rewarding, and sometimes painful) individual change. When change does come, it can lead to a lot of confusion, disappointment and questioning about where life is headed in the long term. One important message that isn’t really communicated to people in their twenties these days is that this is all a normal and healthy part of life. Experiencing this change is all just about forming yourself as an individual and making yourself the person YOU want to be, rather than the person other people want you to be. In work life, home life or love life it’s important to find what matters most to you and can bring you to a happy, fulfilling and complete life.
After surviving my own tulmultuous initial post-college years (and still winding my way down the path of twentysomething life), I decided to reach out to my fellow Quarterlifers, and hopefully provide some guidelines and advice that I hope will help anyone in their twenties, at any stage, to find the direction they’re looking for in their lives. The goal of this blog is to provide some “rules” to getting the most out of life in your twenties that have come from experiences of friends, family, people who have successfully navigated their own Quarterlives, and even my own experiences. With an open mind and open heart, living life in your twenties can be proven to be the best time in your life. Hopefully when you look back on this emotional, adventurous, frightening, enlightening, challenging and wonderful time in your life, you’ll realize that it’s made you into the person you hope to be for the rest of your life.
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