Guide: Your Twenties

Welcome to the Decade of Disappointment

The twenties are that magical span of time where you’re supposed to find yourself, build a career, fall in love, develop a personality, maintain glowing skin, save for a house, become a global citizen and, somehow, eat enough fiber. You enter this decade with light in your eyes and exit it with back pain, regrets and a haunted look you picked up around 28.

The thing about your twenties is that no one really warns you that they’re just your teenage years in a trench coat. A little taller, a bit smellier, but still confused, lost, and completely incapable of cooking rice without ruining it.

You begin with hope. You really do. The world feels big and ripe for the taking. You’re full of plans. Maybe you’ll move to Barcelona and write poetry, maybe you’ll start a business that combines coffee, yoga and counseling. Maybe you’ll marry rich. The possibilities are endless! You just need to figure out who you are, what you’re meant to be doing and why your skin suddenly decided to have adult acne and crow’s feet.

Read also: Guide: You Want Too Much

Making Plans You’ll Abandon in 8 to 12 Months

In your early twenties, every decision feels like it has to mean something. You map your life out on paper. “By 25 I’ll be married. By 27, I’ll have a stable, fulfilling job and a houseplant that’s alive. By 29, I’ll be teaching yoga in Bali with a partner who respects my boundaries and knows how to start the dishwasher.”

Cute, but by 25 you’ll be four years deep into a quarter-life crisis, living in a tiny third-floor flat with a carpet that smells like the unfunny kind of mushrooms, eating dinner over a cardboard plate while Googling whether drinking your tears counts as hydration.

The problem isn’t that your dreams are bad or that you suck at life. I mean, you do, but the problem is that reality is built like a pissed-off chupacabra with a crowbar and a deep sense of irony. You make plans, life hears them, and does everything it can to counteract them and make you cry in the process.

Money Is Fake, but So Is Your Budget

Remember when you got your first payslip and thought, “This is it. I’m finally a responsible adult!” And then within 48 hours you’d spent it all on oat milk, delivery sushi and a ridiculous t-shirt that says ‘Ex(haus|is)ting‘?

Money in your twenties is like your dad who always says he’ll come but never shows up. You try to budget. You really do. You download apps. You make spreadsheets. You even say things like, “I’m only spending on essentials.” And then two days later, you’ve bought a lava lamp, three scented candles and an obscure vinyl you’ll never play but it “spoke to your inner child.”

Eventually, you reach the acceptance stage. You understand your account will never not be in the red. You start referring to it as “just part of my balance.” You borrow from your future self with the confidence of a con artist who gets towers built to their name and start measuring wealth not by bank statements, but by how many times you’ve said “I’ve got this” while transferring from your puny savings.

You will look back on this time and weep. But not now. Now you need to Venmo someone for last night’s tequila and remember where your wallet is.

Read also: Guide: You Have No Common Sense

Career: That Thing You’re Supposed to Have but Don’t

Let’s not pretend. No one really has a “career” in their twenties, and you’re certainly not the exception here. What we have are jobs. Weird, awful, oddly specific jobs that probably don’t match most of what we studied and involve a lot of smiling through abuse while under fluorescent lighting.

You’ll work in cafés, retail, data entry, customer support, dog-walking, online freelance nonsense and maybe, if you’re lucky, a startup where the coffee’s free but the CEO is a self-proclaimed “visionary” who hasn’t blinked since 2018. You’ll be told to “build your brand,” to “network,” to “leverage your LinkedIn” or whatever nonsense. You’ll do it all. You’ll even post that one cringe professional update that gets three likes and a comment from your old physics teacher saying “Well done!”

But deep down you know the truth: you’re a sham and just trying to survive. You’re duct-taping what’s left of your dignity together while trying to make your resume look like it wasn’t written during a panic attack. The job market is a flaming hedge maze and you’re navigating it with a ladle and a suspicious rash.

Love, Lust, and Questionable Decisions

Romance in your twenties is like trying to assemble Ikea furniture with no instructions, two missing screws and a fire alarm going off. There’s hope, confusion, ignorance and at least one person crying in the bathroom.

You fall in love quickly, recklessly, stupidly and with the wrong people. You date people who talk about their trauma like it’s a job interview and wave red flags like they’re Captain Flint or Anne Bonny flying the Jolly Roger. You fall for people with jawlines and no emotional availability, say things like “I can fix them” while your friends scream into throw pillows and have “the talk” six months too late after reading up on trauma bonding.

Some people will ghost you. Some people will breadcrumb you. One person will own a crystal collection and insist the Moon made them cheat. Another will say they “don’t believe in labels,” which is code for “I’m dating five other people and one of them pays my rent.”

And yet, you learn. You get stronger. You stop answering 2am texts that say “u up?” unless it’s from your mate who actually needs a lift. You realize red flags are not just decor, and maybe at some point you meet someone who doesn’t make you feel like you’re constantly on trial. But only after you’ve suffered. A lot.

The Meltdown Phase: Your Regularly Scheduled Breakdown

Don’t kid yourself: you will have a breakdown, my sweet potato. Probably multiple. Some small and ridiculous, like crying because a bread roll fell on the floor. Some large and also ridiculous, like quitting your job and relocating to another city because your ex moved on from your sad face and is happier without you.

These meltdowns aren’t weaknesses, though. They’re progress. Every breakdown is your soul doing a system reboot. Let it happen. Cry in public. Sit in your shower listening to sad playlists. Stare at the ceiling and contemplate becoming a forest witch. All of it is just you healing from your pathetic life until.

Then you get up, you call a friend, you make toast or whatever else mundane. You reluctantly apply for a new job that you know you will hate but you need it because capitalism won’t kill itself. Life goes on and so do you.

Read also: Guide: Living with Anxiety

Friendships: The Real Love Stories

If romance is chaos, friendship is your anchor. These are the people who show up at 2am with ice cream and bad advice. They know your worst habits and still make you ugly birthday collages. They’ve seen you cry, scream, vomit and dry-heave your way through life, and they’re still there, sending you memes and dragging you out for overpriced cocktails.

You don’t always keep the same friends. Some drift. Some ghost. Some just fade like bad denim. But the ones who stay? They’re your family. A very dysfunctional family but they’re the reason you survive.

You might not have money, love, fame, or your shit together, but if you have at least one mate who will call you out you when you’re being a numpty, you’re doing fine.

Read also: Guide: You’re Being Very Undude

The Glorious, Anti-Climactic Turn Into 30

Then, one day, you wake up, and you’re thirty. And nothing happens. No angels. No fireworks. Just… silence, or the neighbor’s screaming children for the least lucky. You stretch. Your back cracks. Your knees are weirdly painful. You sigh, and it hits you.

You made it.

You’re still here.

You’ve got scars, debt, stories, a deep need for therapy and maybe a plant that hasn’t died. You survived the bizarre decade where nothing made sense and everything hurt.

You’ll miss it, in a way. The chaos, the late nights, the ridiculous dramas, the questionable sandwiches. Everything will remain sweeter in your memories than it was back then, and now you get to be a different kind of mess. A refined mess. One who drinks water on purpose and knows how to cook pasta.

Read also: Back in the Days: A Nostalgic Rant

Final Thoughts

Your twenties aren’t about being successful or finding your “true self.” It’s about surviving. It’s about enduring the noise and the confusion, the heartbreak and hangovers, the undercooked rice and overpriced nights out. It’s about stumbling forward, yelling “I’m fine!” with tears in your eyes and glitter on your face.

If you’re still alive, still trying, still occasionally laughing, then you’re doing better than you think. Now go moisturize, call a friend if you have any left and stop texting people who don’t reply. You don’t have time for that, you’ve got another decade to ruin, you beautiful mess!

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