Old But Young

The audience I believe I am writing to is, like myself, in this weird perpetual state of being "old but young." A phrase I have finally put to the feeling of going on Instagram and seeing kids you use to babysit deciding on a college to attend in the fall.

It is the weirdest feeling, let me tell you. I am also the oldest sibling, cousin and grandkid on my mom's side, so the feeling of being old comes and hits me like waves every time I see my family.

My friends and I have continually talked about being "washed-up" as we go into bars full of juniors, bars that once were our stomping grounds. But the best part about all this irrelevant and old talk is that in the grand scheme of things, we are actually so young. A fact I feel that twenty-somethings forget a lot of the time.

We take ourselves so seriously, me included, that retrospectively looking at the timeline of life, we are just getting started. This idea has been getting me through this week as I apply for jobs in the real corporate world. Particularly in the sense that I should put myself out there for failure, because in many ways that is what youth is for; failing, re-evaulating and starting again. Cheesy, but there is a lot of truth to that idea. So don't dismiss me quite yet.

I know a lot of what I am saying is probably common sense to many people, or a talk that you have had with you mom over and over again when you call in tears because you didn't know that the career fair was that day. It's overwhelming. I have never heard or mentioned this dilemma with my friends and it is a conversation we should be having, in support of this age of our lives.

I remember taking this picture on New Years Day my sophomore year of college with my best friend Peaches (the back story on her name will come later!!) and being scared to post it because we had wine glasses in our hands. So, like any instagram fiend, we restaged the picture with coffee cups instead. Looking back on a memory like that, scares me because in one way it doesn't seem that long ago but in the other, I would never think twice about posting a picture with alcohol now. It reminds me how young of a mindset I had then and provides some perspective on my life now. Even to this day I look back on journal entries written when I thought I knew it all, when in-fact I was so immature and young.

I guess I say all this to point out that even though we feel really old, mature and are expected to have it all figured out, we will look back and realize that wasn't the case.

We are expected to rise to every occasion, whether that be having a resume, attending career fairs, emailing people back right away, managing our grocery budget, going to class. Overall, we get so much responsibility as the privilege youth, are expected to go above and beyond in our day to day. While that is very important, it is also important to realize that it is just the beginning and you don't have to have it all figured out right now.

So, if you don't go to that resume critic workshop, you can still stay on your grind. Whatever that "grind" may look like to you, because finding your fulfillment isn't absolute. There are many pathways to get there.

This post is simple a critic on young adulthood, a state of my life that I feel very emerged in at the moment, and the richest part I found in writing this post is solstice in the idea that there is so much more to come. I hope I could do that for my readers as well.

This is a little quote I saw outside of Shakti Yoga in Athens, and felt it was relevant to why I am blogging, why I write about things the way I do and to challenge everyone to speak up, even if it leaves you a little vulnerable.

-Caro