Nov. 8 | It takes a while to wait.

I am a week away from turning 23, which is still somewhat of a wild feeling to me. I'm not sure whether I'm more bothered by the perspective that I've been legally able to drink for two years now, or that I'm approaching what one would classify on paper as "mid-20's". However, I think my expectations of the behavior and wisdom of someone in their mid-20's is more acquired a couple years later, so maybe I can calm down and enjoy my youthful innocence a bit longer.

That feeling of life going too fast has been hitting me more and more though, that I'm getting older than I'm ready for and that I missed out on very normal things of growing up. The idea of being one with adulthood will eventually come, and I hope that the feeling of being constantly lost will finally go away, but I can't escape this weight of regret that I missed out on a couple of crucial years. In fairness, everyone else around my age did too - the pandemic sucked a lot in that regard - my problems are magnified immensely, given that I'm the one creating or dealing with all of them.

I'm still figuring out how much I value and appreciate my roll of the dice for the child and young adult me from the past. I'm very lucky to have grown up in a caring household, with access to a worthwhile education and a generally favorable progression of friends and friend groups, but I'm struggling to be content with who I was in particular. I look back and see a bit of an awkward individual, who never fully registered any awkwardness or insecurities until well into college. The amount of time I've spent behind a screen, while thoroughly enjoyed through games and a lot of YouTube, took away from the time I now want back to reach a place where I feel like I did something... enough.

Maybe it's a little naive of me to feel this strongly about it though? Earning a black belt isn't some small task, especially when it was indirectly responsible for helping me find my love for teaching. I'm already (almost) 23, but I'm also only (almost) 23; with good health and practices, the rest of my life could be those 23 years three times again. While I've largely moved on from interacting with musical non-passively on a daily basis, there's every possibility (and I have a great amount of talent and knowledge) it could show up again out of nowhere. The last third of 2024 for me is spent in Italy, which could open doors I didn't even know were there in the first place. Finally, I'm finding some enjoyment in things like cooking and some areas of humanities, which I have a history of seeming to be the last person to take any interest in.

And what do I do about myself socially? Friends are still a bit of a weird concept to me. So many people have made their way into my life, and almost just as many have made their way out, some doing so in an ordinarily passive manner and a few others in more unfortunate ways. My longest-lasting friendship with someone I talk to with any consistency has just passed five years (this is not counting those I've met online), but the next place in that rank has only been half as long. Am I happy about that?

I don't open up very well; that means both that I can be a little hesitant with how much I share, but also when something does come out freely, I'm left wondering if I needed to say something at all. The idea of having someone to trust without any second thought is wonderful, but now the feeling of having to reserve my personal baggage for a long-lasting friendship is becoming more. It has not come easy these days to find someone I feel like I really click with, and I've discovered that the desire for that shows very much when interacting with that weird class of people called extroverts. No judgement at all, you are just as lovely as the introverts, but maybe I should spend more time listening instead.

How will I make those friendships outside of school? When will I have the time to learn the things that I want to learn, even if I'm just asking for maybe the first three things on my list? Will this feeling of being two or three years behind as a person ever get away from me?

So it feels like I'm in a bit of a rush. Life always goes too fast, but right now, it's going extra-too fast. The mild panic for answers to show up now has made itself at home in the back of my mind, and it's about time it moved on out.

The lingering idea for me in all this, however, is that those answers won't come quickly if I want to keep the natural and comfortable aspect. That rush is happening at the same time as my need to slow down and wait for them to come along on their own accord. Relationships come out of nowhere, I couldn't have forced 16-year-old me to thoroughly enjoy an art history class, and I register my neurodivergent tendencies for myself at whatever time I register them.

Going slowly takes a long time. Go figure.

I relate to a lot of this.

As someone who is nearly two years your senior, and going to be 25 soon, I don't think I have ever once stopped to consider that I'm in my "mid-20s". But you've made me think about it, and a lot of my old high school friends seem to fit more firmly into the "mid-20s trope" of living on their own, having cars, having good jobs or else furthering their education. I've learned that it does no good to feel like you're not doing enough because you don't fit into a certain mold at a certain age. Do the things you want to do—Italy sounds great!—but if you only want to be doing boring adult things or finding friends or a partner because that's what people your age are "supposed to do", try not to let that motivate you. There is no life template. As long as you're finding enjoyment in things you do every day, and you don't feel like anything is missing from your life, I don't see any reason to make a drastic change just because your age integer is going up.

That being said, while I don't personally relate to feeling like a critical part of your life development was taken away due to COVID, I can completely understand why you would feel that way. But just because you're almost 23 doesn't mean you can never get back any sort of childlike playfulness and you have to be a lame serious adult for the rest of your life. My mom is in her mid-60s, and she always asks me to play cards just like she used to ask her siblings to do when she was a kid, with the same tone of voice and everything. I think it's healthy to maintain some level of joy and innocence in your life, since too much stress and worry really takes a toll on you, mentally and physically.

But yeah, don't feel badly if you don't think you have enough IRL friends or feel pressured to be in a relationship. (Of course, this is coming from someone who has exactly one IRL friend and is constantly single, and I don't feel like anything is missing from my life, so go figure.) One strategy I might suggest if you're feeling like life is going too fast is to write a few little sentences every day, maybe just something like the best and worst parts of your day. When I was a kid we used to call it your rose and your thorn for the day. But it was a good exercise, and made me appreciate something about each day as it happened.