On Being 27 and Not Knowing If You're Doing It Right

Nobody tells you this, but 27 is a weird age.

You're old enough to have done real things. Built real things. Hurt real people and been hurt by real people. You've had jobs and quit them. You've booked flights and missed them. You've loved and lost and written about both.

But you're also young enough that none of it feels settled. You look at your life and you can't tell if you're ahead or behind because you don't even know what the race is. Or if there is one.

On paper, I'm "doing well." But there are mornings I wake up and think: am I doing this right? Is this the path? Should I be somewhere else, doing something else, being someone else?

And then I make my chai and open my laptop and the feeling passes. Not because I found the answer. Because I stopped needing one.

I think the pressure to "have it figured out" is the single most destructive idea in my generation. This notion that by 27, or 30, or whatever arbitrary number, you should know who you are, where you're going, and how you'll get there. As if life is a GPS and you just need to type in the destination.

Life is not a GPS. Life is a road trip where the directions are wrong and the map is from 2003 and the best parts are the detours you didn't plan for.

I don't know if I'm doing it right. I don't think anyone does. I think the people who look like they have it figured out are just better at hiding the doubt.

But here's what I do know: I'd rather be lost and moving than found and standing still.

The movement is the thing. Not the destination. The movement.

-I.R.