Twenty-Something Year Old Journalist

I am writing this in my final days as a 23 year old. My final days of patiently waiting to not be a 23 year old anymore. 

24 is arguably the first age where you are old. (25 goes back to being young, though) And I have been greatly enjoying aging my parents by reminding them they are about to have a 24 year old daughter. (Which surely ages them way more than me)

I’m not sure what to expect as a 24 year old. I still live at home, working in my entry-level job that AI threatens to overtake with each passing day. I still sleep with my childhood blanket that desperately needs to be washed, and I’m still upset that Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner are together. (My manifestations should have been more specific about which Kyl(i)(e)e he ends up with)

Despite not knowing what to expect as a 24 year old, I can surely tell you what to expect as a 23 year old. 

You will live at home. Let me be very clear, you do not want to live at home, and your parents surely do not want you to live at their home (I was pleasantly surprised not to receive an eviction notice for my birthday), but despite this, you will. This was most certainly not part of any plan you have ever had, but neither was living through a global pandemic, the second election of Donald Trump, nor the fall of democracy. 

As a 23 year old, everyone will be in a relationship. You will not. But you realize you don’t want one. You’re young! You’re fun! You need an excuse to get out of the house! You’ll get blog material! The dating will be fun, the company will be questionable, the thought of sex will be better than the actual act of it, and feelings about dating will get more and more confusing as time goes on. 

Work will be work. You will join the capitalist death march to retirement. So many spreadsheets, so much Excel, so unfulfilling. You will not make enough to move out or reasonably afford a $7 coffee shop habit. This does not stop you from said $7 coffee shop habit, nor will it stop your DoorDashing habits, no matter how many times you delete the app. 

You’ll go to Utah more than you would have ever expected to go. You’ll also weirdly go out with a lot of men with a connection to Utah. It will get to the point where you wonder if it could be some sort of sign. You deduce it down to your attraction to porn ‘staches. 

You find out that it’s a possibility that your Mom and Dad and grandparents might have actually been cool and actually lived full lives before you came along. Maybe your brother is kinda okay too. Be sure to never tell them this. 

You will fall for the AI-generated video of rabbits jumping on a trampoline. Probably many others. You wonder how you got work done pre-AI. This haunts you. 

Friends are hard to make and hard to come by. Your friends will either reside on the coast where you went to college (the opposite side of the country) or in a landlocked state starting med school. It’s very lonesome to be a post-grad. You’ll yearn for community and social interaction, but have a hard time finding it. Your family’s new addition of a cat will ease this pain. 

You know you’ll have your whole life ahead of you, but you will be so stuck on being 23. 

And that is what you can expect as a 23 year old. Now that I have finished writing this, I am now 24. I am now officially in my 24th year of life, unsure of what to expect, but excited for the unexpected. 

I am most excited, however, that I still have a full two years before I am kicked off my father’s insurance.