04 Feb 2018

When you start moving into your twenties, there’s constant pressure to know what the f*ck you’re doing with your life or, at the very least, what you’re doing for the next couple of years. I get it.

Once upon a time I got so sick of answering the same questions over and over I thought I might get some business cards to hand out to people at family gatherings that say ‘yeah, look how big I am. No, I don’t remember when you last saw me where I came up to your knees. No, I don’t know what I want to do just yet. It’s good to see you too’, because I was sick to death of the same questions over and over again.

Despite what Aunty Dorris tells you, and the pressure from your ‘rents, society and employers to get the ball rolling, it’s super okay to not have everything figured out by the time you hit your twenties, and you’re not a teenager anymore.

I call bullshit on any young person who is convinced they’ve got it all figured out.

Hell, even people who finished a full-fledged university degree or vocation get left with the what the f*ck do I do now? question. The most comforting nugget of knowledge (at least in my opinion) is that nobody, no matter who they are, knows what the f*ck they’re doing. It’s kind of like that feeling when you ask your mate about an assignment and they tell you that they haven’t started either.

Students, tutors, CEOs, politicians, lawyers, doctors. People in their twenties or their fifties. Whoever you are, or whatever you’re doing nobody really knows what’s going on (except for doctors, they’ve got a pretty good idea…hopefully). We’re all just playing the game of life hoping that everything will turn out okay in the end. (Which, by the way, it will; so stop freaking out.)

I’ve got a a challenge for ya. Next time you feel pressured by a baby boomer asking you if you’ve figured out what to do next, ask them how old they were when they got interested in their current career. I doubt very much that they’ll say they knew from 17 that they wanted to become Assistant Account Director at Digital Industries Pty Ltd (whatever that last bit means). 

You think I thought I’d be writing online articles aimed towards people who don’t have everything figured out a month ago? If you did, I’d be very impressed because I personally had no idea this is where I’d end up. 

And you know what? Maybe you don’t want to figure it out just yet. Maybe you want to take things as they come–that’s also totally cool too. Here’s some profound advice for you: if you force yourself to find your thing for the sake of finding your thing, then your thing will never be found. Good stuff, eh?

Of course that doesn’t mean don’t try. I know we’re all connoisseurs of Netflix and Doritos, but get out there and try as much as you can in this wild, glorious period of self-discovery. Travel, work, study–do whatever the f*ck you want. It may sound like an old cliché, but you just never know what your hidden talents may be, so you might as well put yourself out there and find out.

by Bradley McDowell