Already 23

Hello to Hello Ilene

I jokingly said to my boyfriend today, ‘should I start blogging my marathon prep?’ It got me thinking, why not join the hoards of people oversharing on the internet? I’ve been mourning having an outlet to put my words after graduating university and there’s no need; substack here offers the perfect opportunity for any shmuck to get on their laptop and start babbling away. Perfect. While I’m unsure if anyone will read any of these, there’s no harm in letting my mind wander through written lines.

Knowing my writing style and armed with the knowledge that I have a low to non existent reader base, I’m sure my posts will be widely varied and highly confessional. Beyond marathon prep, my mind will likely take me (and consequently any readers, happily or not) through navigating my new move, new job, new life, and new fears as I work my way through my early 20s.

Luckily, my birthday is next week. A new age is a perfect time for some written reflection. While these annual confessionals are typically confined to journals, I’ve lost more of those than I can count over the years, so it might be a good time to go digital.

23 is a big age. At 23 most people have graduated university with some even onto graduate school, hangovers have officially become a painful and full-day affair, and friends have scattered across the globe. We are wandering alone and our bodies don’t bounce back as quickly as they did in our teens. There’s so much to juggle as we manage the looming quarter-life-crisis and, to make matters worse, the Pew Research Centre tells us that today’s twentysomethings are financially behind their parents in the 80’s, with only two thirds of 25 years olds working a full time job. It’s pretty bleak. And I’ve been feeling pretty bleak.

Turning 23, or perhaps more accurately graduating university, has brought with it a plethora of changes that I feel unable or at the very least unequipped to handle. The voice in my head eats at me with worries and more often than not, I lack the motivation to talk it down. Should I have pursued a career straight away? Is moving halfway across the world a good idea? Will my 20s be really lonely? What if I made the wrong choice and it impacts the rest of my life negatively? Unfortunately, I know I won’t be getting the answers to these questions anytime soon.

Though I feel like I know very little, one thing growing older brings is an awareness of my strengths and weaknesses. I feel no need to skirt around my strengths; I know I am the kind of person who creates a goal and plans actionable steps to get there. I know I am good at putting in the work. I know I am the person that friends come to for advice because they trust me to keep a level head and offer truthful and logical advice. I try my best to self-reflect and acknowledge when I’ve made misstep. It’s my weaknesses that make me anxiously second-guess myself, creating pressure to achieve a level of perfection with ever moving goal-posts, infinitely out of reach and infinitely allowing me to self-criticise. So I push myself, for better or for worse, to be better and better. As good as I can be. I don’t always succeed.

Only time will tell if I succeed at being 23. All in all, I think I can say I succeeded at 22. There were no surgeries (a first for me in many years), no heartbreaks, and no major fall outs or flops. It was a good year.

In the spirit of self reflection, here are somethings I learned at 22 that I want to implement at 23:

1. You can achieve the goals you set for yourself if the only option you have is to succeed. This year, I had some academic and professional goals I told myself I needed to achieve. With focused work and discipline through routine, I was able to achieve them. I’ve learned from speaking to and watching my friend Paulina, who is the most driven person I know, that most of our desires in life are all within reach as long as we take the steps to reach them. If you waste your time, if you don’t focus, then you won’t get there. Simple.

2. Challenge what you think you know about yourself, particularly when those things keep you from experiencing more joy. This year, I fell in love. In a way that I hardly thought was possible. As young as I am, I’ve had my share of negative romantic relationships. Yet the relationship I’m in now is stable, sure, and soft. It’s forced me to reflect on my wounds and how they might cause me to wound someone else. I learned that ‘facts’ I had developed about myself are a result of my experiences and relationships. These so-called self truths are at times unreliable. I’ve also learned that sometimes, it does take someone else to help you heal things about yourself. That’s just as valid.

3. Put down your vice. Whether you indulge in drugs or alcohol, unhealthy relationships, or punishing your body, these vices are ultimately distractions from success and happiness. This one has been a long time coming and is a daily commitment. However, when I stopped dedicating so much time to caving into myself, all of a sudden I had all this time to consider the habits that might make me a fuller, kinder, and more peaceful person. The Buddhist in me reminds me that suffering is inevitable, and I cannot find absolution by wandering in darkness.

Now that I’m old enough that my heart squeezes when I see children at a playground and think to myself, ‘Oh to be in primary school again,’ it’s time to get some things straight. What things, however, are as yet unclear. Maybe I’ll be a bit closer to finding out when I turn 24. In the meantime, get ready for some serious whiplash on this substack as I cover marathon training, moving to Japan, my first fulltime job, and navigating postgrad. Here goes.