20Something: Emma

Emma settles into my couch, Dunkin’ iced coffee in hand. It looks heavenly. I’m fighting a nasty case of the Sunday Scaries.

We don’t see each other as often as we used to, so we spend a few minutes catching up before I begin my line of questioning. She’s wearing a The Killers graphic tee, presumably a souvenir of the concert she recently attended. Her hair is in a messy top knot, exposing a row of dainty gold earrings climbing up her ear. 

We recap the past several weeks of our lives, swapping TLDR summaries of what’s gone on since we saw each other last: she went to Wisconsin for a work trip. I started a new book for my book club. She’s watching House of the Dragon and is a fellow Daemon stan. I got a couple of new tattoos. Then, we get down to business.

The first thing I ask is whether she had a preconceived notion of what her post-grad life would be. She tells me that her pre-grad idea of post-grad life included moving to the city of one’s dreams, paying taxes, and “doing adult things.” In a sense, her current life ticks those boxes: she lives in Chicago. She pays taxes. She does adult things. But like so many of us pandemic grads, it took her some time to find her footing. 

It’s a tale as old as Covid time: plans of moving, jobs, and independence all fell away in the early 2020 surge, landing her with six months of uncertainty spent in her college town. “We get to have some credit for getting through that,” she says. Where a college graduation ceremony usually delineates a clear transition into the adult world, the lack of one left many of us sorely wanting for some sort of closure, unsure if our next steps would take us into the unknown of true adulthood or back to our childhood bedrooms.

Looking at her life now, everything has fallen into place as she hoped it would, but that’s not to say that stability equates to an immediate end of uncertainty. “The scariest thing about post-grad life, honestly, is re-learning how to make friends as an adult and how to navigate relationships,” she admits. She tells me that her move to Chicago ushered in a new wave of questions: “How do I navigate this? How do I find people to hang out with? How do I make friends?”

(In case you were wondering, Emma and I met in a Facebook group for people looking for roommates. We considered living together but the timing didn’t line up, so we chose friendship instead. Great decision on our parts, if you ask me.)

She says that entering the working world also forced her to take a step back and examine who she was as a human, outside of a college major or a hobby or a friend group. Despite a “good-ish” sense of self in college, she explains, “as soon as I graduated and was in the working world, I had a really, really hard time figuring out what I wanted to do or who I was.” When the realization hit her that no one else has it figured out either, she had a “switch-gears moment.”

Louder for the people in the back: no one else has it figured out either.

“I don’t want to know, career-wise, what I want to do right now. I just want to live my life as I am now. I’m never going to get any younger… so I might as well shove [in] as many experiences as I can. So that’s what I’ve been focusing on more.”

Instead of getting hung up on her career path (hi, guilty), she sets goals for her personal life. “I know for my career, I want to have fulfillment,” she explains, “and that’s different for every single person. But for me, like, my goals lie more in a personal sense. I want to travel the world. I want to have cultural experiences with people in other places. At some point I would love to, you know, run a marathon, or do things like that, that personally give me fulfillment.” 

She goes on to tell me that when it comes to her career, she’s never been one to label something as her dream job. Instead, she’s taken the stance of “I’m happy doing what I’m doing. Is it what I want to do long term? Not necessarily.” But ultimately, she’s not into the whole “turn your passions into your job” thing.

I tell her I can totally relate. Ever since ballet went sour for me, I’ve avoided putting pressure on my passions to become something that supports me. Relying on what you’re passionate about to pay the bills, while at times energizing and rewarding, can also lead to resentment and guilt. I don’t want to go down that road again.

“Okay,” I ask her, “so if your passions aren’t career-based, what are they?”

She smiles.

“I have a passion for meeting new people and getting new perspectives on things. I always challenge my own perspectives…. I have a passion for travel. I’ve traveled my entire life.” She rattles off places that she’s been, and explains that her love for it stems from her desire to see the world through different cultural lenses. To this, I can also relate.

She’s also an avid writer. In fact, she’s writing a book. It’s something she’s been working on since she was 17, chipping away at bits and pieces when she feels inspired. I’m fascinated. I pry for a synopsis. 

She tells me it’s slightly dystopian, taking place in a city where everything is based on physical attraction. The kicker is that she’s not assigning gender roles or facial characteristics to any character. She wants the reader to be able to develop their own assumptions, whether they come from context clues within the writing or from their own lives. “I really want it to be a book where it creates a world for the reader, where they can really immerse themselves in it and not have to feel like they’re constricted by the protagonist being female, or male.” She wants the reader to make it what they want. She’s giving them a blank slate with the trimmings of a story.

Well, well, well, if it isn't our lived experiences manifesting themselves in other modes of expression. I tell her it reminds me of our discussion about making friends in our 20s. We project our own interpretations onto other people, shifting ourselves ever so slightly to match what we think each person expects of us.

“Yes. Yeah,” she responds.

I ask what the best year of her 20s has been so far. She tells me it’s this one. She’s learned the importance of filling up her own cup first. She’s coined it as her year of discovery, and experiences, and growth. We agree that there is something immensely valuable about navigating our 20s as single women. We’ve learned to stand on our own two feet. We’ve found a sense of security in the fact that we can always rely on ourselves. In the notion that whether or not we find another person to do life with, we will be okay. 

“I don’t know for sure what I want my dream life to look like, but I know for sure I want it to be fulfilling, and I want to do it before I settle down and have a family,” she insists. “To be able to say that I can do [life] independently, it all goes back to how much I love myself and how much I care about my own life and my own experiences.” She’s done the whole codependence thing before, and she says the idea of doing it again scares her. “I’m in this mindset of, ‘let’s just live my life with myself and love that.’” She realized that if she spends her life thinking about what she’s missing out on, she’ll lose out on so much of what she can give herself in the present.

I suggest the idea of finding self love through pride in your accomplishments. Loving your independence, your resilience, your intellect. She doubles down on this: “Be proud of yourself. Being able to tell myself I’m proud of myself… I really, truly mean that. I’ve never been more proud of myself.

I tell her I think she’s one of the most secure people I know. She laughs. “The entrée is me,” she jokes. 

“Last question. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Without hesitation, she responds: 

“Kind, generous, and thoughtful.” 

Checks out.