I just turned 24 and time feels like my biggest enemy.
To fully understand, I need to take you back 2 years.
A month before I graduated from college, a friend recommended The Defining Decade to me. Now, I’m usually not one to believe in fate and signs, but this felt like a sign.
Graduation was a momentous occasion for me. Maybe the momentous occasion of my young life so far. Just from the title, it seemed like I was going to unlock the secrets of a successful life by reading it.
So I read it.
And wow, I came out of it feeling like a man on a mission. I won’t be summarizing the book (many many many summaries on Goodreads), but here's the rough message I got from it:
Okay kidding. Slightly.
The book makes strong arguments on why our twenties are an incredibly pivotal time in our lives. It highlights the impact it has on our career trajectory, romantic relationships, friendships, health, etc. So everything, really.
Luckily for me, I read the book. I’m ready to conquer my twenties and make this the best 10 years of my life. In my head, everything was planned out perfectly.
That’s right.
I was already 2 years into the MOST critical decade of my life. And because I didn’t read this book when I was 20, who knows what I missed out on? There was no time to waste now — The Defining Decade suddenly just became The EVEN MORE Defining 8 Years.
Fast-forward back to the present day, I’m still plagued by this feeling of an arbitrary deadline approaching. By virtue of turning 24, I’ve entered a weird place in my twenties — the middle ground between one’s “early twenties” and “mid-twenties”.
You might think these are just silly labels, but the Internet begs to differ.
Clearly, this is a big deal for a lot of people around my age.
But why should it be? When I woke up on my 24th birthday, I felt exactly the same as I did the day before. I have the same friends, same apartments, same job, same…everything. Why does jumping from one arbitrary age range to another matter so much?
To answer this question, let’s just scroll down a bit from my Google Search.
Well, this is a bit concerning. The message is loud and clear — twenty-somethings feel the need to have their lives figured out. And if it's not figured out, then you're falling behind.
We’ve been brainwashed to believe that our twenties single-handedly decide the course of our entire life. Once it’s over, it will be too late to change anything. You either win or lose the game of life at the crossroads of 30.
Some will say that this feeling is not unique to this current generation. I disagree. Though I don’t doubt that other generations may have experienced something similar, I think that something has changed in the last few years to place even more pressure on twenty-somethings to figure out their lives. And no, I’m not blaming it on The Defining Decade.
It’s a combination of the rise of “influencer” culture, the sudden mainstream obsession over self-help and productivity content, the social media-ification of platforms like LinkedIn, and, undoubtedly, the feeling of lost time from the pandemic that needs to be made up for.
Together, they’re like the Avengers of making someone in their twenties feel like they’re falling behind.
I’ll be the first to admit that it’s been a difficult feeling to shake off, especially living in a city like New York. Here, it feels like if you’re not going to multiple social events every week, training for a marathon, in a relationship, AND on the cusp of making the Forbes 30 under 30 list, then you’re not doing it right.
And it feels exhausting.
I don’t question that our twenties are a pivotal time, but I don’t think it’s the be-all and end-all. Think of it as the time to plant the seeds for where you want to be. What you eventually reap may come in 5 years, but it may also arrive in 10, or 20, or 50. And that’s fine, there isn’t a singular timeline that we all must adhere to. I
Murakami didn’t commit to writing until he was 29.
Stan Lee created his first hit comic at 39.
My parents, the people that I look up to the most, didn’t get married until their late 30s.
I’d like to think that, as someone in his twenties, time is on my side.
To end, here’s an excerpt from
’s essay on a similar topic. Their essay is put much more eloquently, so I’d recommend giving it a read:We feel less anxious about the timing of our lives when we surrender control to a timeline that is intimately our own. If we’re too rigid, afraid to honor the ebbs and flows of existence, we miss a sweet and integral part of life: the reception of the unknown, from which beauty and surprise emerges.
Thanks for reading!
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extremely relatable and also slay for the illustrations