You Still Don't Know

As someone who used to work for a magazine and who spent hours upon hours scouring every issue of every popular women's magazine you can possibly think of to provide comprehensive information on competing periodicals, I don't read magazines just for fun very often.

KS, however, does receive a few magazine subscriptions to design magazines, and to Real Simple, which I'll occasionally peruse. I found myself reading an article in Real Simple's "Life Lessons" section tonight, because the content piqued my interest. I'll share the following excerpt, taken from Kristin Van Ogtrop's article entitled: "Can I Call You Back In 15 Years?"

"Then you hit the age of 25 and you realize that your days are numbered, so to speak. You begin to understand that time is no longer infinitely elastic, and that while you spend hours attending to one priority, you are stealing those same hours from another. And why did nobody warn you that you would be spending 30 percent of your time on things that are really tedious or difficult, like trying to find a rental apartment you can afford and a nice boy whom you can marry and stay married to forever? This is a terrible time of life, the mid-20s, because you still don't know what real adulthood looks like. And since you probably don't have children yet, you can devote entire afternoons to questions like "Who am I? which rarely lead you down a pretty path."

I could go into more detail on how she discusses maintaining female friendships when your time is already divided into oblivion as you get older, but suffice it to say it was an insightful article and I would recommend it as a quick-read.

If you read the whole thing, you would see that I successfully cropped out the one part pertaining specifically to ladies my age. Obviously.

Fortunately there is no "tween" word-equivalent for someone my age, who has reached the both accomplished and confounding quarter-century mark but still is yet to experience major life triumvirate of marriage + children + mortgage. While being 25 is fun, part of its charm is that there is an air of transience about it. Seeing other friends grow up to play house (but with a real house and real people), you start thinking about things in the tied-down category and you have to wonder what that's like as well.

Because in all honesty, you (and by "you" I mean "I") don't know what that's like at all. Part of you wants to know and part of you is okay with the fact that your life still allows you many freedoms. It's a strange tug-of-war of wanting what you don't have while also enjoying what you do have, however temporary it may be.

Also... I love funny mom-writers. They have the best wisdom because they don't take themselves too seriously.

Definitely not a bad lesson to learn.