Your 20’s ✨

The invitations start rolling in—graduation parties, wedding showers, baby announcements. Your Instagram feed is full of people who are stepping into their next chapters with purpose. Caps in the air, smiles wide, babies swaddled. For some, it all seems to fall into place like the perfect puzzle—college diploma in one hand, job offer in the other, keys to a first apartment in the back pocket. It feels like everyone has it all figured out, except for you.

You sit there, scrolling through post after post, wondering if you missed the memo. Was there some secret meeting where everyone else learned the game plan? Why does it seem so easy for them while you’re left asking, “What now?”

The pressure mounts. You’re constantly asked, “So, what’s next?” as if the answer should be perfectly clear. But it isn’t. Instead, it’s a swirl of uncertainty. Do you go back to school? Do you take that job you don’t really want, just to have something to say when people ask? Do you pack your bags and start fresh somewhere new, hoping maybe the answer is waiting for you on the other side of the country?

And what if you don’t even want to follow the “normal” path? What if you’re not interested in the typical milestones—steady job, house, marriage, kids? What if the idea of staying in one place or one career for the rest of your life makes you feel trapped, not accomplished? No one talks about that much—the people who don’t fit neatly into society’s idea of success. But maybe that’s the point: success doesn’t have to look the same for everyone.

It’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind when everyone else is hitting those life checkpoints. But what if you’re just taking a different route? One that’s not about timelines or ticking boxes, but about exploration and finding what truly matters to you, on your own terms.

And what if that takes a while? I know I said that your twenties suck—and, yeah, sometimes they really do. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe they’re supposed to be hard, confusing, and full of uncertainty because it’s the only time in life when you get to figure things out without the weight of expectation crushing you. This is the time when you can try and fail and try again, without the same consequences. When else will you get the chance to test the waters of life, to dive into new experiences without knowing where you’ll end up?

The truth is, you don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t have to know your five-year plan, your ten-year career path, or where you’ll be living this time next year. Life doesn’t always unfold neatly; sometimes it’s messy and full of detours. And sometimes those detours lead to something even better than what you had planned.

Take it day by day. Try something and, if it doesn’t work, try something else. It’s okay to stumble, to take a step back before moving forward. Failure isn’t the end; it’s just part of the process. It teaches you what you want—and more importantly, what you don’t want.

So, what now? You get to decide, not once, but again and again. You get to rewrite your story, as many times as you need. There’s no rush. You’re allowed to wander, to explore, and even to fail. Because in the end, it’s not about having all the answers right away. It’s about being okay with the fact that, sometimes, it’s the questions themselves that guide us forward.

And maybe that’s the most important lesson of all…it’s okay not to know. You’re not alone in feeling this way. The people who seem to have it all figured out are often just as uncertain behind the scenes. So breathe. Take your time. You’re exactly where you need to be, even if the path isn’t clear yet. Day by day, you’ll get there.