So having posted five blog entries this point I started wondering what other types of blogs and "advice" columns were out there for 20somethings. So going to my trusty friend Google and typed "surviving 20 something". What I found would make any intelligent 20something run screaming away from their laptop.
I came across two books.
The first entitled Quarter-life Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. While I agree that the 20s hold "unique challenges" - I'm not sure if I would call this a "Quarter-life Crisis" I'm experiencing. That conjures up images of premature balding men riding crotch rockets and offering to buy the sorority girls at the bar a drink. Sorry Ms. Abey Wilner, that's hardly what I'm experiencing.
The second book, by some Mr. Marcos Salazar, was a mouthful (only appropriate since the title made me gag): Turbulent Twenties Survival Guide: Figuring Out Who You Are, What You Want and Where You're Going After College.
Turbulent?
Sounds as if my 20s are going to cause me motion sickness?
Someone going to provide me with a barf bag?
Now maybe these are very well written books...maybe they are everything I've been looking for...but having titles that remind me of pamphlets handed out at the local community free-clinic - doesn't make me want to rush out and read them.
I'm writing a blog, not a self-help guide book, maybe I should be looking at other 20something blogs? I find my search ending with similar disappointments. I don't even get past the opening sentences in the first blog I open:
"Caught in a MidTwenties Life Crisis. Are you a woman in pursuit of sucess with big hopes and dreams? Do you feel like adulthood is catching up with you and its time to start making your dreams realities? If yes, then this blog is the empowerment tool for you..."
Really?
I mean...you're joking right?
"This is the empowerment tool for you!"
This isn't a blog it's an informercial!!
Okay.
Three strikes, should have taken a baseball clue but I decide I can't stop yet...
...just one more site...
...let's see...
Here's one. It's a chat forum for 20something bloggers. This has to have something useful.
Top Topics of discussion:
"Longest without sex?"
"Ladies! What's in your purse/bag?"
"Most wild place you've had whoopie"
"Do you still Myspace?"
And a number of topics and profile pictures of beer and cocktails.
....someone pass me a Xanax....
how am I supposed to find my place as a 20something when this is the 20something image being portrayed.
Well guess it's good I decided to go against my usual charater and start blogging. Someone has to show not all 20somethings are sex crazed, beer guzzling egomaniacs with an identity crisis.
I hear that the "quarter-life crisis" happens b/c our whole lives before then are mapped out by keeping us busy with our education, from preschool-college, and sometimes grad school, too. I guess when it's up to us as individuals to figure out where we fit in and it's time to take the next step, and there's no one out there telling us what to do, it can get kinda freaky!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I had the Johnston experience. I feel like that's what helps me know that there are other people like me...it feels like there's this mass media label put on "what it means to be in your 20s" when so many 20-somethings are different from that! I guess there is also identification with certain subcultures that can help with "where do I fit in" if I feel like I'm not the generic stereotype. We are all unique to ourselves, but then we are all also human, so we all have a lot in common, too! :)
ps. I like your blog a lot! It really just shows what an intelligent, self-aware person and woman feels, thinks, and wonders about, and really makes me feel so not alone, though I'm turning 31 this year. I've felt lots of confusion in my 20s, and there's still quite a bit, or more, now that I'm in my 30s. I guess each decade sort of brings its own sets of expectations, and there is such a sense of failure or loss for not having achieved or reached those life milestones, but your blog makes all that anxiety dissolve b/c you show how a real 20-something is thinking and feeling, and also the others who post comments, realizing it helped them, or the ways they think and respond to what you put out there; it all makes me feel better, too! :)
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