{Adult Language}

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Twenty–something. Finished college. Unemployed. Job-seeking.

Or maybe employed—but only in order to pay crippling rent-prices and/or to fuel an increasingly intensifying social-life and obsession with clothes which is a direct result of having no idea what the next step is. Figuring you might as well look good and feel good (albeit briefly) while you stumble through the indecision.

Sound familiar?

If there’s one thing a large majority of both my school and college friends have talked about in circles recently, rehashed upside down and inside out and analyzed to the point of disintegration and dissolution into pints of craft beer as we search for new and exciting things to try and explore in life, it’s that none of us have a f*cking clue what we’re doing.

Degrees in the bag, some barely making it to the end of the month without overdrawing. Others (myself included) still live at home and are trying to decide whether to move out or use the limited funds available to us to live, to see and do things before we get too old or tied down. Parental inconveniences aside, living at home near a bus route and train line has it’s advantages.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard things like ‘I need to sort my life out’, and ‘I have absolutely no plan”. Rampant are exclamations of uncertainty acting as grace notes to sips of wine and beer, which gradually reduce the immediacy of the problem and allow it to fester some more in the depths of that which is ultimately within our control, yet which feels in every sense of the words to be outside of it.

Because really, when it comes down to it all, the world really is our oyster. I don’t mean this in the overly enthusiastic and positive good hippie-vibe-giving gushing that tries to convince people the world is all fabulous—because I think at this stage we’re finally coming to a certain awareness that this world is not always a nice place to live. I just mean that existing in society today it is literally just a matter of deciding and convincing yourself it’s ok for you to try to do something.

The trouble exists in that it often takes getting to that point of ‘Oh sh*t. What now?” for us to take a step back and look at our options in a way that makes us see there actually are plenty out there, if we just take our reality into account and break it down into something we can begin to comprehend.

In my case, I made lists. I’ve made list after list of things I could do—things I love to do, things immediately available to me, things that require a bit of work and application to obtain. Essentially, I’ve finally gotten the opportunity to sit back and look at myself and my talents for what they really are and I’ve taken my options into account. Surprisingly, a lot of the things I’ve found myself lusting after passionately as a career path and way forward are only narrowly related to what I studied in college (this realization severely distressed me).

But I’ve come to realise that the time I spent in school and college, blindly working my way toward a degree that wasn’t going to directly lead me into full-time employment (hello, BA!) was actually probably the best thing I could have been doing at the time.

Unless you are part of the small percentage of people who know exactly the career path they want to embark on (and have known since being asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, 10 years ago), chances are you’ve found yourself in these horrors of the post-college life-crisis, where nothing seems certain, and The Fear seems to stretch out endlessly ahead of ahead of you as a result of a 3-year long session of not-having-to-think-about-being-a-grown-up.

I’m still holding out on becoming a popstar, but sadly the days of shiny parachute pants and S Club 7 dance moves being over sadly won’t exactly allow the picture I’d painted for myself to materialize.

As it stands for me right now, there is no guarantee of stable or definite long-term employment—but I’m ok with that. I’ve gotten this far, and it’s given me the chance to learn about myself and my talents, and to see the things I could bring to the world if I just shape them up and put my mind to it. I’m not going to say it’s easy, or that everything is going to be okay, and I can’t promise that for anyone else either. I’ve just finally come to the calm (and somewhat exciting) realization that the world really is my oyster right now. I’m just struggling a bit while I figure out exactly how to eat oysters—I’ve never tried them before.

I’m sure they’ll be delicious when I eventually figure it out, and their omega-3 fishy oils are only going to add to my life both nutritionally and cognitively. There’s just so much potential out there, and I’d encourage anyone struggling with this at the moment to just take a little while to look at yourself and what it is you love to do and what makes you tick.

If your eyes light up when you talk about it, then you know you’re on to something.

Don’t compare yourself to friends or family who seem like they have their sh*t together or have it all sorted, because I can guarantee you that they don’t.

Listen to yourself, your needs, your talents and things might start making a bit more sense. I don’t know. I’m not even sure yet. But I know I’m excited to try some of these oysters.

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Author: Jenny Ní Ruiséil

Editor: Alli Sarazen

Photo: Sasha Kohlman/Flickr & Irina/ Flickr