20's Life, Or How to Be an Adult Without Losing Your Mind

Yes, this is me. Good old college days.

Yes, I'm only 22, but I'm going to share my little bit of wisdom anyway.  Most of these tips have been stolen from friends or learned the hard way through my own experience--learn from our mistakes!

• Don't ignore things and hope they'll just go away.  Sure, this may have worked when you were a kid, and your parents would eventually fix that overflowing toilet or take you to the doctor or pay your school bills.  But no more.  Now you're the adult.  No one is going to fix your leaking faucet, call to update your credit card information, or pay your utilities, so you have to do it.  And trust me, it's much better to do it now than to wait until your kitchen is destroyed and the bill collectors are knocking at your door.  A more specific version of this tip would read "Pay your bills on time--always."
• Keep up with laundry and dishes.  There's nothing worse than coming home from a long day of work and realizing you can't eat dinner because every plate you own is dirty and piled in the sink.
• Take care of the things you own.  If you're like me and my husband, most of your things are hand-me-downs, but just because they were given to you doesn't mean you shouldn't treat them like you paid for them.  Change the oil in your car, wipe off your kitchen table, use your perishable foods before they, well, perish.  Additionally, if you are like some of my more rambunctious/klutzy friends: Don't climb on furniture that is not a step stool or ladder when hanging pictures, let an overheating laptop cool down on its own instead of covering it with an ice pack (yes, this actually happened).
• Don't be afraid to ask for help.  There are plenty of people who have been where you are, broke and unsure about how to navigate the adult world.  Ask your parents how to file your taxes, if you've never done it before.  Have a friend show you how to make their famous casserole dinner.  Talk to your coworkers about the best dentist in the area.  People love to give advice--let them.  The old saying, "It's not what you know, it's who you know," has proven itself to me many times just in the past year, from finding a job to purchasing a new (used) car.  Find people you trust, people who like you, and let them help.
• Make a budget.  Figure out how much you make every month, list all your mandatory monthly payments (rent, utilities, loans, cell phone, etc.), and allocate the leftover money.  Some should go to savings so you can afford to replace that blown out tire or go on vacation to Paris in a few years.  Also known as "The Obvious Tip."
• Keep in touch.  Yes, it's much harder to make friends once you're working, taking care of your home, and possibly spending time with your spouse and/or kids.  Unlike during the school years, you aren't spending large chunks of your day, or extracurricular activity time, with people your own age and with generally similar interests.  You can and will make friends, whether at work, church, or a class or activity, but during this process of searching for new friends, keep in contact with your old friends and your family.  Realize that, for the most part, your friends won't keep in touch with you.  Understandable--we're all busy, and contacting friends you no longer see every day can slip your mind.  So, as unfair as it may seem, accept it and do your best to initiate conversations, whether through text, email, or phone calls.  Your friends want to hear from you, and you want to talk to them.  Don't let your pride get in the way of your relationship.
• Know your limits, and respect them.  I have a limit on how many strangers or acquaintances I can successfully interact with every day.  You may have a limit on what you eat or drink, or on the drama that you witness among your friend group.  Your emotional limits are as important as your physical limits.  Don't let others--especially your friends--push you past them too frequently.  (If it's a matter of personal growth, however, all bets are off.)
• Don't be afraid of not knowing.  I stole this tip shamelessly from older, wiser friends, and I'm trying to believe it myself.  Yours 20s--especially the early years--are full of uncertainties and big life changes.  College, starting a career, getting married, having kids, moving, and other important decisions and experiences often happen during these years.  I have gone through almost all of them, and I still don't know where my life is going.  Still, I take comfort in the fact that those who have gone before me and successfully navigated their 20s were in the same place as I am--confused, lost, and muddling through day by day.  They tell me it's okay to have your muddling years, so I'm going to tell you the same.  We're going to make it through to the other side eventually.

Do you have any tips of your own for surviving your 20s and being a responsible adult?

What I Do is Not Who I Am

(Image courtesy of criminalatt /
FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

About a year ago, I was starting my semester of student teaching in order to complete my education degree.  I spent seven weeks at one school and eight at another, and the seven weeks I spent at the first school were some of the hardest weeks I have ever experienced.  I admit, friends, that I feel a little ashamed to say this–that the weeks in which I was finally getting experience in my chosen career field, when no catastrophe or life-changing terror entered my life, were still some of the worst weeks of my life–but it’s true.

Every morning, I woke up feeling sick to my stomach.  Every night, I went to bed with tears in my eyes.  I clung to my faith and my friends like never before, and I still felt like I was barely scraping by.  Every class I taught felt like a failure, with my cooperating teacher watching me and critiquing me at every turn, and every moment I had to myself was filled with anxiety.  After several days, a phrase came into my head, and I repeated it to myself like a mantra: What I do is not who I am.

I clung to this phrase.  What I do is not who I am.  The students I taught, the teachers I worked with, had no idea who I was at home or what I did with my free time.  They didn’t know anything more about me than what I portrayed in the classroom, and I knew that I was worth much more than those poor performances.  The sting of failure and mistakes was still there, but through it all I reminded myself that what I do is not who I am.

Now, I’m not saying that our actions do not make us into the people that we are.  Of course, the things we do on a daily basis come from our past and present selves and shape our future selves.  What I’m saying is that my identity is not wrapped up in my job, my friends, or even my hobbies.  Each of us is more complex than that.  We all have been given a variety of talents and interests, and a mistake made in one area of life does not constitute a complete failure of all the areas.

Why have I told you all this long story of my life, and why did I see fit to put it on this blog?  Because this difficult period of my life contributed greatly to my desire to consume less and create more.  If I want to remind myself that what I do is not who I am, that my issues in one area of life are not the sum total of my life, I need to create a more meaning-filled life.  If, after a hard day of work, I simply come home, watch TV, scan Pinterest and Facebook, and shut out the world, I have nothing to fall back on.  My mistakes at work will fill me because I am not filling myself with anyone else.  On the other hand, if I instead create, write, encourage a friend, learn something new, pray for someone with greater problems than my own, take a walk, learn a new piece of music–then I can truly say, “What I do is not who I am.”