20nothing.com

When I was a child (when!), I would pretend that I was an adult. After I turned six, I threw away my dolls as I already had the intuition that “Mums And Dads” was not for me.

I started playing “teachers” or “lawyers” , or when I was really bored, “accountants”. All jobs that as an adult you couldn’t pay me to do.

 

Now, in early adulthood of my twenties, I don’t have a job that pays me. And pretending that a mildew teddybear is one of my students is not nearly as entertaining as it once was. I need a broader, and preferably breathing, audience to enlighten. And so, as an adult, I dedicded to become a writer –  or to be precise I started Starving To Death With A Pen. The audience can be just as responsive as a wet, one-eyed fluffy koala. But at least they smell better.

 

I think that it takes a certain type of person to dedicate their lives, or even just their youth, to the arts (read: stupidity?). Why? Because try as you might, you cannot feed yourself, pay your bills or travel on Self Gratification (Aside: I have to ask, who the hell initially paid for Henningway’s alcohol? Or Capote’s hats?).

Borrowing words, I often say, “I have a dream…” when people ask what I do with my day-to-day life. And fellow twenty-nothings nod in agreement or admiration (or is it naivity?) while the elders – mostly the people supporting said dreams by teaching, lawyering or accounting – nod their head in a different direction, from what I believe is the forgotten excitement of youth.

 

“Life is hard”, “The cup is half full” or “We didn’t have That when I was your age,” are phrases never said by those untarnished by the days of our lives. Just by the people who watch it. Parents, mentors and Showtime Movie Greats have a different perspective (insight?) into what it means to be creating. “Creative” Is rarely the answer.

 

On Christmas Day a Family Friend asked me why I would, “Waste [my] time with nothing when [I] could be doing something.”

“I’m sure there are numbers that need to be punched somewhere.”

“I’m sure there is a Family Friend who needs to be punched,” I wanted I say, yet refrained as I would prefer a bored, middle-aged banker to advertise his frustration unprompted, rather than have me paint the picture. Or, as the case is, write the story.

It was my dad, RG, who came to my rescue and informed FF that I am, “Laying the foundations now, for a pay off later.”

RG is in Real Estate. So my entire life has often been summed up in a, “Putting a deposit on an investment,” analogy.

With FF hanging his neck-tie much like a dog would hang his tail, I explained to Him one of the most magnificant things about being young: Yes, I have a dream. But I am currently inexperieced enough to try and make it real. And, so, one day if I am punching numbers, or teaching real students or defending accomplished writers in copyright infringement cases, I will know that I am sitting at the desk with the knowledge that I Tried. (Aside: I could also be cultivating an alcohol problem or simply squashing the dreams of the young, to simply avoid the reality that I Failed.)

 

And I am not saying that all of those mid-twenties graduates currently educating the next generation (excetier) have escaped the trails and tribulations of The Most Educational Decade Of Life (Aside: Nor am I insinuating that everyone over the age of thirty has failed). I naturally assume that they have sacrificed for their lets be honest, more sensible dream of a degree-pre-resquisit-and-secure-nine-to-five-position. And I envy them. I am jealous that their dream pays an entry-level salary. No one questions you when you say you want to read stories to nine year olds. But, man, you better have a winning argument if you want to write those stories.

But these people who Make The World Go Round (and who will continue to do so when Generation A through X have perished) are still young. Like me, like you, like us all. No matter what you choose to do, you are still learning. Because noone in their [early] twenties has any idea what they are doing.

 

My Nanna was twenty-one-years-old with a one-year-old daughter. I am twenty-three and can only raise a Starbucks Grande Skinny Hot Chocolate to my mouth.

RG once said to me, “Enjoy your twenties. You don’t make your money until your thirties. And you don’t know how to keep it until your forties.”

He wasn’t giving me, or us, permission to slack off or watch Oprah religiously at midday (Aside: But we can still watch Her and be productive. Most of us have degrees in it), what he was allowing for was a guilt free Right To Dream. And the encouragement that trying to achieve said dreams is not a waste of time simply because you are poor.

My friend, Dani, twenty-six, tells me frequently that she is “rich in spirit”. As an Australian-born, London-based nurse, she spends all of her pounds on beautiful suede boots and walking in them on the cobbled streets of Europe. I have other friends, many who are still staring twenty-five in the face, who have purchased their first homes. Who has “It” right?

 

I don’t like to use, “I am in my twenties so I know nothing!” as an excuse. I like to use it as a hypothesis, an aknowledgement that I can’t possibly know what I haven’t lived and an advertisement that I am hungry to learn. Many Generation Y’ers don’t question, “What am I doing?” or “Who am I” or “What do I want to be?” Or maybe many just don’t scream it as loudly as others. Because we all think it, I’m sure of it: through the lenses of expensive Raybans and the blur of cheap alcohol, we are all looking at our alarm clock when it goes off each morning thinking. “Why?”

 

And don’t think that this yellow brick road of confusion is a One Way Street of professional angst and aspirations. Relationships, those precious moments with the opposite sex that compile to make a romance, are just as lost, often blocked with a “No Thru Road” sign.

My nanna, the same woman who had a baby instead of a Latte, recently informed me that she knew one year into her marriage that she had wed the wrong man.

“I knew I had made a mistake.”

And she lived with that mistake for fifty-nine years and counting – something she had realized as a twenty-one-year-old.

Imagine not having the choice (or balls) to right a wrong.

I haven’t lived with the regret of an outfit choice for longer than a day, imagine going through life thinking, “Where is He?” while the one next to you isn’t the One you want.

 

Hence why we are fortuniate, with our infinite opportunities and choices, to be able to Fuck Up and not have to be ashamed of it. Some people (read: older) call our Generation the Disposable Generation, but we are not careless with our minds or hearts (just our money). We are confident to sit up and say, “Ha! Thanks, but no thanks.”

 

Being in your twenties simply means that you can be left alone to explore in the most instinctual (and legal) way possible, to ensure that eventually you get it right. And if you don’t…there is always going to be a teacher or lawyer
or accountant on hand to dig you out of the hole.