“I am a subscriber to a wine program that delivers 4 bottles of wine to your door every 4 weeks… it’s not enough.”

What is it about your early 20’s that are both wildly exciting and beautiful, while simultaneously being overwhelmingly confusing and at times incredibly lonely? And how come no one warns you about it?

Does no one want to admit it? Or is just maybe that the more you talk about it the more f***ed up your life feels? What is it about people in their 30s that look a little less frantic and a little more put together? And when does it stop being acceptable to eat cereal for dinner and using paper towels as plates?

Chances are they did warn us, but if you’re anything like me you didn’t quite get it because you were too busy looking at the world through your rose-colored Ray Bans to notice the misty grey of the unknown come seeping in.

Your 20s are a notorious decade of ups and downs- a roller coaster of changes and emotions, littered with nights when you ignore your emotions just to find them at 2am on a Wednesday at your neighborhood bar, while crying your eyes out in the bathroom.

And if you don’t feel like you’re slowly going crazy at any given moment of any day… lucky you. You can now die peacefully in your early 30s cause somehow you figured out how to glide through your 20s like princess Dianna on a yacht. Or horse drawn carriage. Or something swanky like that.

I think for most of us, our 20s are a constant transition, moving further away from a strong college network and towards the unknown. For the first time in our lives, we’re no longer doing the same thing as all our friends and peers.

I have friends getting married, having babies and moving to other countries. Friends starting their own companies, getting PHDs and some who are still just trying to figure it all out. Me? I fit somewhere in the middle with a new job in a new city, and feel just as weightless as a little tug-boat lost at sea.

But the biggest thing I’m realizing is that I’m not alone. So what can we do to make the most of this season of life in our present, imperfect condition?

1. Present over perfect

As humans we have this innate desire to do/be/achieve/create something more, but we can’t just wander through life waiting for something great to happen to us. Henry David Thoreau once said “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”

There’s a lot of unknowns that happen during this phase of life, and I would venture to say society has placed a negative connotation on the word “unknown,” as though we should have everything figured out by the time they hand us a diploma. But when we let go of expectations, we’re better able to grasp the unbelievable opportunities that each fleeting and present moment holds for our lives.

2. Embrace your Time

I was recently told that time was the greatest asset of being in your early 20s. “Time grants you the opportunity to take big risks and make big mistakes.” It’s almost guaranteed that you will not accomplish all of your goals, but at least we have the time to try.

Take a painting class, attend a business conference, pursue one of your passions or start an Etsy shop as a side hustle to your day job. Most likely, you’re like me with some spare time and limited responsibilities. Instead of shying away and wallowing in your lack of extracurricular activities and indulging in Netflix, embrace your free time and use it as an opportunity to try something you won’t have the chance to in the next 15 years.

So what do we do with the time we’ve been given? Figure out what makes you come alive, and do that. Just remember, you have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyoncé…

3. Revel in Being Alone

There’s so much changing during this season of life, and beyond a change of location or occupation, one of the biggest changes is friendships. One thing about post college life is realizing that the friendships will never be the same, and you can rarely predict what friends stick with you and what friends won’t. There are a lot of friendships in college that were because of convenience and that’s ok, but as you move away sometimes those friendships go with it. It’s remarkable the people that are still there after the dust settles.

This past month I’ve felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the friends that I have during this season of life. There are people I see once a year, once a month and some even every week, but regardless of when I see them I really feel fortunate that they want to be around me. Fortunate that they’re on my team, and continue to choose to be on my team.

But I also spend a lot of time alone.

I think there’s a stigma in our society about being alone, and I started to feed into it, feeling like there was something wrong with me because I spend so much time being alone. In an article by Leslie Tulip she says: “As soon as we see someone by herself, we sort of assume there’s something wrong, something they’ve done to repel other people.” In this same article she goes on to say why being along might be the best thing for you: “Revel in being alone. It can be fantastic for your soul. You’re anonymous in your own city.”

Being alone is the opportunity to work on yourself and grow as an individual… it’s like in algebra. The only way to solve for an unknown is to isolate it on one side of the equation.

4. Baby Steps

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” –John Lennon

I’m pretty sure we all have some sort of idea of what we want our life to look like. And let’s be honest, no one knows that the hell they’re doing…but the successful people are the ones that try.

Spend some time reflecting about what’s happened for you in the past year. What big changes have you undergone, and what do you still wish to happen. Be grateful for everything that’s happened, and daring enough to start walking towards your goals. What can we do during this season of life, this day, that will help us get to where we want to be?

For me that means reading more books, visiting more museums that challenge my view of culture, and saying yes to more spontaneity.

I’ve been told that we must become what we want to attract. Do you want to be around people that are caring, adventurous and joyful? Take smalls steps towards working on those qualities in yourself.

This season of life is just that- a season. It’s important to remember that nothing lasts forever, and hopefully, step-by-step, we’ll get to where we want to be.

“The sum of the little things matter much more than the sum of the big things”