4 Profoundly Annoying Things About Being in Your Twenties and What You Can Do About It

If you are a twenty-something, I feel for you.

To illustrate, my twenties went something like this:

Fell in love, moved cross country, got cheated on, and royally screwed over. Moved back across the country. Went to college, drank beer and got kind of fat, got a corporate job, quit to join a startup, watched the startup fail and got unemployed, got very sad, got another corporate job, stabilized things, became a boring 30 something who likes to read a little too much and appreciates house plants.

You can do better but I’m not going to put a ton of pressure on you either.

In your twenties you think, no, you’ve been told you must have everything sorted out.

Everyone is watching from the sidelines, wondering what you’ll do as a fresh upstart in this wage stagnant, culturally volatile, geopolitical hell hole we all live in.

It feels like being a Roman gladiator battling it out in the Colosseum, and the audience is simultaneously cheering and jeering you. They want you to pick up that exotic battle ax they’ve never even seen and swing it in ways they never could. Meanwhile, they are inhaling chicken wings and guzzling beer.

Now you’re probably wondering: Shane, did they even have chicken wings at the Colosseum? Probably not, someone will go look that up for us.

Here’s the thing.

These people, constantly prodding you about what you are going to do with your life, didn’t have all the answers when they were the young upstarts.

So why are they asking you for yours?

As people, we have a tragic tendency to get hung up on status and hierarchy. Your spectators come out of the woodwork and want to see how you‘ll play the game. They also want you to play by the same set of rules they did to see how you fare. Do you win or lose?

They have a compulsive, unconscious need to measure and benchmark themselves against you. You are providing them with fresh data.

It all feels like some weird inter-generational power struggle at the end of the day.

Here’s another thing.

They are a little afraid and will be more than a little annoyed if you somehow prove them wrong. It’s like they want to see you with your nice little ice cream cone, the ice cream is your dream. Then, they want to see it melt. Because there’s did.

Let’s say you are the winner in this little comparison game. Then what happens?

Your startup pans out and your equity throttles? They are not going to like that if they played it safe in corporate climbing a wobbly ladder. You date like an A-list celebrity whoever and whenever you like? They married their high school sweetheart. They are now miserable.

Or maybe it's something seemingly simple, like, you pick up a paintbrush and get a little creative from time to time. Meanwhile, they shrugged off that art set purchase from the Hobby Lobby as impulsive, never getting freaky with their inner artist.

Instead, they watch Bob Ross reruns and cry.

Anyway, here are 4 really annoying things about being in your twenties:

#1 You Start to See the Cracks in the Social Narrative

For the first time, you see how things don’t always run smoothly in adult life, despite the sexy commercial they broadcasted to you about how your future was going to be.

There are ugly little obstacles, tangents, and nuances society blatantly ignores. They should have given you a playbook, or at least a heads up, but it doesn’t work that way.

Just because you want something doesn’t mean you get to have it.

And that is really, really annoying.

You can deal with this by getting gritty and accepting reality for what it is: a dump truck tilting gravel and dirt piles onto your shiny fragile plans.

Welcome the dirt! Turns out that acceptance is a good thing because you learn, that no matter how hairy the situation may be, there’s always some action to take after you feel the sting.

When you give yourself a little space and focus on taking small, steady steps, you can learn to run your own race in due time.

#2 Lazy People Telling You You’ll Change the World

The audacity! These people will look you square in the eye and tell you your generation is going to save the world, or something poetic like that.

Meanwhile, in the back of their mind, they are thinking how naïve you are and that you’ll probably end up jaded just like them.

I’m here to tell you that no, you don’t need to change the world. Should you give back? Yes, but on a global scale? Come on give me a break.

Do nice things from time to time and you’ll be a better person than most. Generosity is a skill that builds up over time if you practice it.

Your Sunday brunch spot is not the United Nations, but you should still enjoy that bottomless mimosa.

#3 Everything Revolves Around Alcohol

Speaking of mimosas…

Booze is the gasoline of friendship in your twenties. If you decide to quit drinking, your car breaks down and you get to be healthy and lonely.

What kind of sick paradox is it that you do something super positive for yourself and you get punished for it? Do it anyway.

If this point isn’t landing for you and booze doesn’t impose itself in a big way in your social life, congratulations, because that is a valuable asset to stick on your balance sheet. Seriously.

#4 the Things You Need Are Right Under Your Nose, You Just Don’t See It Yet

Opportunity is seemingly invisible most of the time and that too is very annoying.

It takes time and training to learn how to see it, and a dash of character to act on it when you do.

Ways to have more fun, meet someone new, build a cool career, get smarter, get healthier, you name it, can be difficult to spot.

Why is that?

In your life, you are the director. Specifically, you tell the cameraman to point at something to capture to construct the movie. A specific scene, a specific angle. The choice you end up making it just a slice of our behemoth reality.

The rest you leave on the table. Many movies are never made.

Best case, you’re a good director and you point at good things which yield fruits. Worst case, you’re a lousy director and all you can film is a failure because that is all you point your camera at.

The point here is not that you need to be a good director. The point I really want to land for you is this: just film more of it. Change your angles, change your scenes, and question your assumptions about what makes a good movie.

When you’re looking at the world, just be open and experimental about your approach. Don’t overcommit right away to something you haven’t tested. Figure out a way to do something on a very tiny scale. If it makes a little result or gives you a little tiny bit of satisfaction, test again or ramp it up. If it keeps paying dividends, double down on it and get serious.

Fish Oil

In my twenties, I was a terrible director. You saw my movie already, I showed it to you.

I stubbornly stuck to half-baked assumptions I had and made decisions unconsciously. I seldom considered options and alternatives. I seldom projected my choices into the future to see what the future would look like.

I don’t mean to say I’m a royal screw-up, but things could have been a little more enjoyable and a little less painful for me.

Don’t operate as I did. Just, simply put, experiment.

Fish oil.

One of the strangest experiments I tried with huge upside, an example from my 30s.

I read in a book how important and beneficial Omega-3’s can be for the body.

The author advocated taking fish oil supplements. I thought I would try it because his argument was so compelling.

Just a little experiment, buy a bottle and take the supplement for a while.

Well, several months later, my brain was very different than it was before. I can’t guarantee anything whatsoever for you but for me, my anxiety was dramatically lower, my ability to concentrate had roughly doubled, my sleep quality had improved, and my skin and hair became healthier.

That was just one stupid little experiment with massive upside. Think about things in this way.

There’s no limit to the ways in which you can examine and approach life.

Please do conduct your own experiments.