Your Roaring 20s. The cruelest decade of your life.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild, and precious life?"

My sister is a senior in college and we've had many talks about what I'm sharing today. She graduates in May so the floodgates are about to open. Scary or exciting? You can say both.

It makes me think of my favorite lines from a poem by Mary Oliver and it goes like this: "tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

You'd think after 2,000 years worth of generations, we'd stop putting so much pressure on people in their 20's, but nope. The average person in her 20's has dreams probably too big for her heart and bank account to handle. She looks to her left and to her right for what she's supposed to do next, or to confirm that she's on the right track. When it reality, she needs to look up.

It feels like a decade of trying to figure out how to meet your goals and dreams so that your life can begin. But the reality is, your life doesn't start when you finally get your dream job, your dream salary, house, car, married, or family, your life is right now, for your life is the mundane moments and routines as you slowly get closer to the goals you hope to achieve in life.

Goals and dreams are good and healthy to have, but I think too many people miss the beauty in the simple everyday. Not everything has to be Instagram-worthy to be admirable and beautiful. How can you live and be content with what you have and where you are?

I'm no research analyst, but I know what's helped me. Set limits or completely get off social media as this feels like the primary source of tricking you to look over the fence and compare yourself to your neighbor. She's getting her masters, she's getting married, she's moving into her own apartment, she's getting promoted. Good. For. Her.

That doesn't mean you have to. Why look like everyone else? How boring. Be unique. And who let others set the standards for what success looks like.

Also, romanticize the simple daily things. I love doing this because I think it shows you things about yourself that maybe you didn't notice because you were too busy trying to be and look like someone else.

I love waking up at 6am in my matching pajamas haha, opening my curtains, turning on my string lights and soft instrumental music. Then going to the kitchen to make coffee in my stainless French Press, frothing my oat milk, and bringing it back to my room to read my devotion in a blanket by the window. There is nothing I look more forward to than my slow, quiet mornings.

Some of my friends have the joy of waking up next to their husband, or already to their baby girl. God has assigned them the roles of wife and mother already, but I am grateful I get to enjoy my slow and quiet moments with just God and only be responsible, right now, to be a good worker, a good student, a good friend, and a good disciple; while also being blessed with the time and space to have days to myself and opportunities for incredible adventures and trips :)

In all honesty, it took me a long time to learn how to be content with my life- in the simple, daily habits- but even if it took a few years, I know nothing was wasted in that time, and as I think about what I want my second half of 25 to look like, I am excited for what God has in mind for the future :)