Quarantine 6: Twenty-six
May 22nd came and went once again, which means I am another year older. I wrote last year on my birthday based around a Chance the Rapper playlist “25 and Alive”. Unfortunately, this year, I’m unaware of any music about being 26 - feel free to send some my way, so I’m listening to some Mac Miller on repeat as I write this. This year has been crazy - adult life hit, and I realized that I had to move my life towards what I wanted and not what was the easiest or most logical path. This lead me to make some major changes in my life - externally have I completely changed my environment and work and internally, I’ve started addressing some long-standing issues. It’s still a work in progress, but that process of taking ownership feels liberating.
Externally, this year has been Tech Millenial 101 on “how to go find yourself.” In the course of about ~three months
Moved across the country back home from Seattle to New York
Quit my job at Microsoft
Joined a startup
While it may be cliche, it’s also been really exciting. I spend everyday building something that I believe in with my friends. I’ve learned a ton from amazing people - professors, developers, friends, investors. Learning by doing is the only way that’s clicked with me. I dive into the deep end, pause, get my senses, take some educated guesses about which direction to go, and eventually, come up for air. It’s also liberating to realize that you can do your own thing for a while and be OK. The fear of truly chasing something that seems hard often crippled me and the only way to get through that was to lean into it fully.
While the external changes have been massive, the internal changes have been more profound. A lot of these started before this year, but I’m finally moving forward and not spinning my wheels. In many ways, the “quarter-life crisis” was a feeling of uncertainty about my identity. It felt like floating in this abyss of post-graduate uncertainty. When you don’t have to worry about how you are going to provide for yourself and your family expectations you start addressing more abstract needs. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, first came esteem, and then came self-actualization. It became me vs. me - a tough battle.
At first, I was uncomfortable floating. After constantly achieving through college and up to my first job, I started to feel like I had stepped off the path to success by quitting. I worried about where I would be in five years. Embarrassingly, I took to going on Linkedin and seeing the paths of people I respected. It was a massive Hodgepodge of JDs and MBAs and fancy job titles (I don’t recommend you do this). I started worrying about not having a graduate degree or a powerful job. But time moves linearly, and for all the time spent dreaming about other paths, I was not following my own. Eventually, I had to start making decisions - while you are floating.
So when I came back to New York and started spending time with my family and old friends and taking it easy. I lived at home for three months - a humbling and delightful experience for a 25-year-old. Ironically, many of my friends have gone through a similar experience (maybe not as humbling and delightful) during the quarantine. My mom was once again cooking me dinner and I had to plan around their expectations. We spent time hiking and watching TV shows. It was like being in high school again. Except without the school.
Living at home, I began to realize that at the end of the day, no matter how much I achieved, I would end up creating a home with a family and what I had in my life currently was sufficient to build a pretty good life. Why was I so focused on status and achievement if it was making me unhappy and the people I cared about most, my family and friends, didn’t give a shit. This alone relieved a lot of the pressure I was putting on myself. Knowing you can totally fail and still be ok is comforting. However, there is a risk of falling into a bit of nihilism if you believe you have to do nothing to be happy. The remedy for this is to consider what you want to spend your time. It’s a cliche that there are so many problems in the world - a better framing is that there are things that make people unhappy or will make people unhappy - health, finance, climate change, animal welfare - and it doesn’t matter what you do, just pick a problem and care about it deeply. The purpose is arbitrary.
I moved into the city - the first time I lived in Manhattan since I was 8. I was born maybe one mile from where I currently live. I walked around neighborhoods the neighborhoods that I had grown up in. I like taking walks and spending time outside. But I also love all the restaurants and people watching. I started walking to work and planning meals with friends.
Then Coronavirus hit. And the city that was uncomfortably energetic for me, slowed to a halt. Instead of slowly coming out of my internal life, I was forced back in. Many people found it to be an uncomfortable departure from the excitement of their day-to-day life, I found my old routine. We are still in the thick of the pandemic. It has gotten harder not seeing people. The weirdest part of this birthday is that I probably will only see my family this entire weekend (Shoutout Chris and Lauren for stopping by with buff dip yesterday - I wrote this before I saw y’all)
So where does this take me going forward? With the current situation, the whole world is floating. My friend sent a meme to our group chat the other day that I thought was fitting:
One day turns into the next and my birthday felt much like every other day. I woke up, made coffee, worked out, worked, ate dinner, watched TV, and then repeat. Likely, the years will be similar. 26 will simply be a progression from 25, further clarifying who I am and what I like and dislike. So maybe it’s just time to get used to floating and just enjoying it.