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I was recommended ‘The Defining Decade’ by a friend I made at a ‘Have Dinner with 5 Strangers’ event. We were talking about books and our favourites when I mentioned how reading Dolly Alderton’s ‘Everything I Know About Love’ at the right time, as a confused and overwhelmed 21-year-old, pretty much changed my life. She then said I HAD to read ‘The Defining Decades’ by Meg Jay.
A week passed when I found myself in a Waterstones ( somehow, I always end up in one ;) ) and decided to see if they had it. They had one last copy, which I was thrilled about because I could go home and immediately start it. At first, I felt a little overwhelmed by the vibrant green cover, but as they say, don’t judge a book by its cover!
I started reading it on a Wednesday evening and was so hooked that I was done with it by the following Wednesday. It became my book bag, I never left home without it and a highlighter. So this is what I learned and loved from it:
I. Every twenty-something-year-old is overwhelmed with having so much time after graduating
As someone who thrives on structure, direction and goals to achieve, student-life was perfect for me. I loved knowing what I needed to do for class, knowing what I had after school, knowing what to study for a test, and having time out of my day blocked for study-related things. I did, however, find myself romanticising the free time I’d have once I finished school/my degree. What I didn’t know was how much I’d come to despise it.
Suddenly, having nothing to structure my days around was so overwhelming I’d find myself being unproductive. Yes I had activities like dance classes, seeing friends for coffee and looking for a job, but somehow, it still unsettled me. I’d never really felt so alone despite being surrounded by at least one person (my flatmate aka my sister) because I felt like no one really understood the trouble of ‘having so much free time’. Even typing it out sounds pretty ridiculous.
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I had never felt so heard, so understood and all it took was reading someone else’s words to describe how I had been feeling and what I had been thinking about. TDD is written about the problems faced by the twenty-something year olds that Dr Jay had met throughout the years as a clinical psychologist and there’s something so comforting about knowing how I am not alone in feeling the way I have been.
II. It’s normal to be overwhelmed by too many options
I always thought that I knew what I wanted to do after graduating. It turns out I only knew what I didn’t want to do and that having time to explore meant developing ‘crushes’ on every single one of my interests.
As a creative person, there are so many things I love doing and so many things that I’ve dedicated time to perfecting in some way. From photography to video editing to event planning and to social media/content creation, the possibilities of what I’d like to land a job in is endless.
There’s a chapter in TDD called ‘The Unknown Thought’. In this chapter, Dr Jay’s session is with a twenty-something that feels as if…
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Safe to say, I was close to letting my dam of tears start flowing because that was what it felt like having so many interests, big dreams and an overwhelming amount of pressure to make something of my life. This twentysomething felt overwhelmed by the fact that he had the opportunity to go ‘anywhere’ or do ‘anything’ but without the knowledge of whether it was going to work out of he decided to swim in one direction, he felt hopeless and like he was ‘treading water to stay alive’.
Like him, I feel like having the opportunity to do anything, anywhere, is more daunting at times than it is refreshing. I’m writing this review right now and deciding to make a book blog as I’m still unemployed and job hunting every day. I’ve decided to take my freelance photography to a more serious level by increasing visibility through growing my social platforms, decided to take social media more ‘seriously’ because it apparently increases my chances of landing a job (which makes sense since I want a job in social media / PR / events / content / etc). There are about four different industries I’d LOVE to work in— publishing, fashion, beauty, music/entertainment—but also ten other ‘jobs’ I’d love to have.
There’s so many things I want to do and sometimes, that isn’t necessarily a good thing because my attention is split in ten different ways. What I learned from this chapter? Every twentysomething feels that way. We all (ok maybe not all, if you knew what you wanted to do when you were in school and are doing it now, congratulations) feel like we want to do ten different things, maybe because we’re good at it or maybe because we know it’ll pay well or because we can see ourselves doing well in it, god knows. The main takeaway is that whatever it is, we must START somewhere and with something.
By starting something— a job application, going for talks, networking, starting a personal project— we’ve already taken a step, or we’re a breaststroke away from what we’re meant to be doing, from land. There was this analogy that my line manager from my placement year had given me before I left, he said, ‘Every job you take, whether you stay in it for six months or two years, is a stepping stone towards what you’ll end up doing and what you’ll be specialising in the future. So, take it one step at a time, one stone at a time and explore the possibilities whilst you still can’.
I think as the oldest daughter in my family, and as an Asian, I’ve put pressure on myself to achieve my goals and achieve them quickly and efficiently. So much so that sometimes I forget I’m only 22 going on 23, I’m three years old in adult years, it’s okay to not know what you want to do and its okay to explore different things. What’s not okay is staying still. Time goes on, life moves and I don’t want to be twenty-eight and hardly have anything on my CV that will take me a step closer to my ‘dream job’ or my ‘dream life’.