Entering the Late 20s

“Here’s what no one ever tells you about your 20s. You’ll still have no clue who you really are, and you will be the last one to know it. When I was a kid, I thought I’d have it all figured out. By the ancient age of 28, I’d have a glamorous husband, a successful career, possibly a castle …”
- Playing House, LMN

Tomorrow I turn 27 years old. And I have a 300 square-foot studio apartment, a subway pass and an entry-level position surrounded by amazing, sophisticated women who all unintentionally make me feel 17. I know it's because I'm young and naïve in the industry.

I don't have what I thought I'd have by my late-20s, but I’m happy. I have great friends, New York, a job on 42nd Street between Times Square and Grand Central, a boyfriend who flies up from Atlanta whenever he can, a supportive family I can call on whenever I need them, Tequila Tuesdays with coworkers, and DVR to record LOST while I’m working late or out on the town.

Tokii and I were talking the other day about those lists that teenage girls make describing their perfect man ... which seems realistic when encompassed by the optimism of childhood but progressively converts to fiction as youth is absorbed by age. I think I actually wrote out a list when I was 14.

Neither of us had thought about our lists in years. We've stopped needing those lists to figure out what we wanted from someone else. Let's face it; you can't truly know what you want from someone else until you know who you are. And as I've been learning who I am, I realized that the list of qualities I had expected of my perfect man were actually the qualities I wanted in me.

When you create that list as a kid with the intention of sizing up a potential partner, sometimes you're actually sizing up yourself and who you want to be. I'm not exactly who I thought I'd be by the time I turned 27 years old. In fact, I'm still figuring that part out. But I don't mind if I'm the last to know as long as I eventually know it.

They say that life doesn't always turn out the way you plan. That saying is so cliché and I'm so glad that it is.