The Roaring…er, Disorienting Twenties

In this era of blogging and BuzzFeed and Thought Catalog, how do you find your own voice? Doesn't every thought become some mash-up of a tweet you saw and BuzzFeed article a friend posted on Facebook, with a slightly ironic tone you borrowed from your favorite blogger? While it is exciting to be able to know so many people’s life goals and insecurities and personal thoughts, without having ever met them, does it really allow for any space to be yourself?

As a young 20-year-old I want to be:

• Heard
• Inspiring
• Important
• Valued
• Adventurous

But how can I be all of those things…when so many of my peers are already being all of them so successfully, and posting about them too?

I wonder if all of the 20-something generations before me felt this confused, lost, and full of yearning to find themselves. I refuse to believe it is a new “problem,” but it seems like all of us current 20-somethings are the most vocal about it, perhaps because we have so many platforms serving as our voice pieces.

Perhaps it is more than being bombarded with so many thoughts and fighting to have my voice heard. More than a crisis of social media and addicting posts by young bloggers. I think I am also tired, worn-out really, by every virtual presence telling me what I should get out of my twenties:

• Be who I want to be…societal expectations be damned
• Start getting my shit together, this is when retirement funds and a stable job need to be secured
• Do anything BUT settle down
• Don’t waste these years being practical: 30 is when shit gets real
• Make mistakes…ALL of the mistakes! Learning is a lesson in itself
• Take a job, any job! It is better than no job
•  Insert poignantly relevant and overly opinionated advice/rant here

Every one thinks he/she is an expert in this area: telling someone else how to live their life. Of course, it is probably well meaning, coming from someone who wishes they could go back and do it over again- the right way. Of course there exist the online critics who say that is why we shouldn’t do it the right way: we have to figure out these retrospective lessons on our own. That is why they call it growing-up. We are literally, and figuratively, growing into ourselves. We can’t let someone cheat us of those lessons, no matter how painful the growing spurts may be.

So, when all of the BuzzFeed articles about "23" this or "Twenties" that pop-up, I can read them, take or leave their advice, and move on. I can read posts by my favorite blogger, but then close the computer and live my own adventures. I can see what advice Forbes has for me today, and then make my own to-do list for tomorrow.

Perhaps it is not so much trying to follow, or even read, all of the advice and thoughts and dreams. It is finding my own voice in that cacophony, and recognizing that it is the only one I should truly value.