The Path of Twenty Two

I graduated college nine months ago and resolved that I would not move back in with my parents and would not begin work in an entry-level office job. While interviewing Eric Weiner, author of “The Geography of Bliss” for my campus newspaper, I told him these life resolutions, and the advice he gave has stuck with me ever since.

“You can only be young and stupid once, Michelle” he said. “So write. Travel. This is the time in your life to f*ck up.”

And so I did. I took the travel-based recruiting job with ISV and said no to salaried jobs with Target, Liberty Mutual, and Aerotek. I bought a plane ticket to Kiev, Ukraine, with a return ticket out of Amsterdam. I spent the summer couch surfing across Europe, learning bits and pieces of languages I couldn’t speak, catching up with good friends, and scribbling notes into my dotted notebook that disappeared from my plane seat on the way home.

And then the job began – the fantastically complex recruiting world of ISV; a subculture full of perpetual novelty with peaking highs and lows, constant uncertainty spiked with adrenaline rushes, solid relationships formed through shared experience, and seeing the world while living out of a beat-up fuchsia suitcase.  

In the last year, I’ve slept more places than I can even keep track of – beautiful resorts overlooking beaches and mountains, crappy Travelodges with questionable plumbing and a bathroom that smelled like old pizza. Hostels with 11 other people I’ve never met; couches, pullout beds and air mattresses at friends’ houses in seven different countries.  I’ve hiked up mountains, jumped off cliffs and out of a plane. I’ve gone diving under the ocean, floated along rivers, and over big swells on my surfboard.

This, and much more, has been my 22^nd year of life.

But the season is ending. Only a few more weeks left in the recruiting year, and I have big choices to make. Is it time to settle down? Do I miss having more than Skype and a suitcase as certainty in my life? Where do I go from here, when presented with two very different paths – one that is more certain, secure, predictable.  And another that is completely unknown; pursuing love, travel, adventure and all those other frivolous things that don’t pay bills or show up in bold on a resume.

But wait - I’m only 22. I keep telling myself this, because it’s become my mantra. The best form of justification I have.

Most of my fellow coworkers are in their mid to late 20s, and smile when they realize that I’m “only 22 years old.”

 “Aww you’re just a baby” Meetal used to say jokingly to me. “You have so much time to figure things out” others would add in.

But now, taking a step back, I’ve come to realize – what’s the big rush? Who says that your freshmen year of life, you need to have everything figured out? What a blessing it is to be young, and optimistic. To have freedom from mortgages, children, the pure necessity of stability. There’s nothing fake about this alternative path to the real world. If anything, it has more fulfilling challenges and better scenery, in exchange for never quite knowing where it’s going to lead next.  (Which, who are we kidding, you never really know in life anyway.)

So I think that Eric and my older coworkers are right. This is the time in my life to f*ck up - to follow my heart, and take the path less traveled. To hit walls so I know how to climb over them. To write. To make optimistic plans that may or may not pan out, but to believe that they will.

And that is the blessing of being 22: knowing that I have both time and stupidity on my side, and as long as I keep moving forward, I’ll find my way - no matter which path I choose.