It really does feel like everyone else has the money, the jobs, the relationships – something to anchor them while they focus on moving forward , while I’m still floundering in every department of life

Good to know I’m not alone.

The last paragraph about dealing with lonliness, sadness and uncertainity hit close to home. I’ve been crying every now and then the last few days. I’m 26 officially and I’m struggling just to get by and make more money. I thought the 20s were supposed to fun, glamourous and exciting – I sometimes don’t know how the girls on Laguna Beach or The Hills have it so well put together. I’m still trying to get my finances together, develop positive relationships and make money.

Managing my finances, organizing my personal life, decluttering and managing my career are all things that help me feel in control

Thanks for writing this post….. It is great to know I am not alone in my thinking……..

I remember being a teenager; I couldn’t WAIT to be sixteen to get a driver’s license. Then I couldn’t WAIT to turn 18 to legally drink (where I live in Canada). Then, moving out of my parent’s house was the biggest thing.

Now, I would do anything to be sixteen again – able to stay up all night and not go to school until 9 AM the next day, to a slack art class…… and my favorite part of the year is going back to my parents’ house, bumming around and eating festive foods.

I think sometimes we tend to spend time wanting and planning the future moments, instead of enjoy the current ones.

I think a lot of the posters up here (including myself) are long-term, planning people. (Heck, we’re in our 20s and worried about retirement!) I have to practice “living in the moment” a little. For me, this is almost a “danger” zone. But the other night, BF took me over to another couple’s house, and we just had a few drinks and relaxed and forgot about the worries of the world…. and I felt sixteen again. Carefree… a little buzzed, nonetheless… but we BBQed until 3 AM and listened to music, and slept in the next day. It was the best thing I could have done for myself, just switching up the 8-5 routine.

A also think part of our “problem” if, you want to call it that, is that we “KNOW BETTER”. Sometimes I envy my future sister-in-law, who is 25, works a crappy fast-food job, blows paycheques on booze and parties non-stop. I don’t envy what she does, but I can’t believe someone could be my age and be so…. oblivous. Not worried about tomorrow. She doesn’t stress about things I do, like retirement, or asset allocations, etc. The stock market means nothing to her, she just doesn’t understand the business world, therefore it doesn’t worry her. And therefore she is able to enjoy life in a way I cannot right now. (Not to say that will last – it’ll crash someday.) My point is, our knowledge compels us to be responsible for ourselves. I am glad I am educated and financially sound, but with it comes some of this responsibility/depressed/panicky/too-seriousness. Our challenge is to learn to manage our responsibility in such a way we can enjoy the real things in life….. and this probably takes years to accomplish.

I’m 25. I have the job I wanted. I have a grad degree. These goals were accomplished after several years of working towards them, planning for them, wishing for them.

After I got them, I was really excited.

Then, at some point, it was like: wait, I’m only 25. What’s the next goal? I have no idea what the heck I want to be doing at 30, 35, 40.

I started thinking of buying a house, but the idea of being trapped in one place while I try to sell it, if I want to sell it, freaks me out. Then I think: well, what then?

And, of course, it doesn’t help that I sometimes think about celebrities or CEOs who are MY AGE and seem to have accomplished so much more. How did they do it? How did they know that’s what they wanted?

This is an area that really lacks attention — people prep each other on how to go to college, how to get married, how to have kids. What about helping each other through this stage and what about talking about the truth around it: that this transition to adulthood isn’t quick, isn’t easy and isn’t glamerous? I think that because it is not often talked about (perhaps people forget about this stage?), there is a feeling of being alone in it. In reality, talking to my friends and reading blogs like this says otherwise. This is a challenging point in life.

A quote that greatly inspired me just following graduation: “Sometimes she wondered if everyone had a map but her. Did they all actually know where they were going? Did they have directions to this ‘happily ever after?’ And if they did know, why did they never stop? So what if she didn’t have a map. She had good strong legs, strong enough to chase the ‘happily ever after’…and a strong enough heart to know that sometimes stopping to enjoy the ‘happily righty now’ was pretty good too.”

So – not too much to add here in terms of inspiration but wanted to add another voice to the mix to say “No, we’re not the only ones.”

I distinctly remember having this conversation with one of my girlfriends last summer. We were about 2 months into our first full-time jobs and both of us were already feeling unfulfilled. Mid-conversation, we looked at each other and said “Is this it?! This is what we’ve been working our butts off for?!”.

I think that a lot of us feel this way because we were so busy in college that we didn’t really take a pause to think about what kind of job makes us happy. I know that I took my first job not because I thought it would be fulfilling, but because everyone else was doing it!