"The Brain On 23"

"We are 23, and hangovers hurt now. Most of our conversations these days center on assuring one another we are going to be okay. We are proud of each other but hard on ourselves. When a friend does something as simple as cooking a food more complex than pasta, we applaud her, yet we berate ourselves for not yet having a corner office or a bestselling memoir or a thriving startup.

We dance all night to Taylor Swift because she understands. We love who we want, and we hate labels. We are not in college anymore, and we've just become too old to crash their parties. Everyone we know no longer lives on the same block, and we long for the days of running back and forth between houses at 1 a.m. We have few obligations, yet we are always stressed, wondering if life will ever be more certain...

Things don't just fall into place. We have to put them there, and we feel like every second we spend streaming movies from our bedrooms is a second we are not putting ourselves out there. Yet we stream on."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/molly-sprayregen/the-brain-on-23_b_6046888.html

This is perfect. It was going around like 6 months ago, yes, but I was busy then and now I'm looking 24 in the face and I figured I would finally read it. And it perfectly captures all the contradictions of this stage of life.

(the video at the end is an interview that doesn't really add anything)

Related: The Space Between Families