You’re not going to be young for that much longer.
So now is the time to get yourself on a track that will set you up to accomplish what you want out of life.
What I’m saying is, if you want to be a professional basketball player, you should probably hit the court and start working on your jump shot, sooner rather than later.
So without anymore fluff-- this is why you need to get your sh*t together if you’re in your twenties in New York City.
You won’t have this much energy forever
This city is for the strong. News flash: you already get credit just by being here. Congratulations. Now you have to utilize your youthful energy. I’m not trying to be an a**hole, but you need to act now while you still believe you can, while your passion still has fire. Ever seen a super-motivated old person?
Well, yeah, I have too, but they are few and far between. And they’re running on inertia from a momentum they started in their twenties, probably.
You’re an adult now
That means you need to clean your room, do your laundry, wash your dishes, schedule your own doctors appointments, and even (gasp) pay your own bills. And a bunch of other things that signal you're a grown-up ass adult.
Clean your fu*king room. And I’m not just saying that to you, I’m saying that to myself. Let’s discuss the magical freedom of a clutter-less room. Has anyone ever experienced it? Yeah, it’s like having a planet lifted off your shoulders. I know.
One word: metabolism
Extra, extra, read all about it. Your body will not look like this forever. If you want to go to McDonald’s and get a Big Mac-- this is the time (although I too think it’s bullsh*t that they won’t pay their workers livable wages).
If you want to get in shape, and this is urgent, this is the time. Get the hell off your couch and go to yoga, because if you’re obese and forty it’s way, way, way harder to drop those pounds than it is if you’re a little overweight at twenty-five. Like way harder. I’ve never been forty, but I heard it’s way harder.
You need mentors
And no one wants to mentor a thirty-year-old. Unless they’re, like, seventy... then maybe they do. But the fact that “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” doesn’t have to be a depressing fact. It’s no longer a tribute to feudalism and serfdom, where only the children of the monopolized empires can get good jobs.
It’s really all about passion... figure out what sets your soul on fire, then find out who’s doing that thing. Find these people, and find out where they are. Contact them, let them know you’re their admirer, ask them for advice. That's a dope-ass way to succeed.
,Your grandparents won’t be alive forever
And if they’re already passed away, I’m super sorry to remind you about it. I’m just coming to understand that death is a pervasive feature of life now, but the older I get, the more and more people I know die. I hope this doesn’t mean I’m going to die soon, because I like being alive, but if you haven’t asked your grandmother what it was like for her in high school, do it.
The clock is ticking on this one. If you haven’t asked your grandfather about his thoughts on God, and death, and his childhood, do it. Your interactions with them don’t have to just be political arguments about whether or not we should have to pay taxes or whether welfare should exist at Thanksgiving.
You shouldn’t just have to skirt around the question of whether you’re dating someone.
Just ask them what life was like for them when they were your age, and shut up and listen for once. They’ll most likely amaze you.
College wasn’t that recent
And it will just keep getting less and less recent. Stay in touch with your friends-- I mean it. Lulu Lemon is right when they profess, “Friends are more important than money.” I’m still in my early twenties and I’ve found this to be true, again and again.
You can’t cry on money’s shoulder, and there’s nothing like being surrounded by a whole group of people who learned to love you before you learned how to hide the unlovable things about yourself. One of my friends is only twenty-five and she’s already a gynecologist-- and you better believe I’m scheduling my next appointment with her, and that she will deliver my babies.
Your passion matters
I said it before and I said it again – figure out what sets your soul on fire, then do that thing. As a society, we don’t need a bunch of slaving drones who guiltily dedicate their lives to “helping the poor.”
What we need is a bunch of people whose souls are on fire. And the time is now, and you’re in the best city in the world for exposure (with the possible exceptions of Seattle and L.A.). So whatever the thing you’ve always wanted to do is, for god's sake, just do it. Or else you’ll blink and you’ll be thirty-five and still working at that dead-end job you hate.
Inertia
Galileo was totally right about this whole inertia thing: a body in motion, in fact, does stay in motion. And that doesn’t just apply to physics, it applies to your entire life.
If you’re twenty-eight and you care about plucking your eyebrows, then you’ll probably be fifty and care about plucking your eyebrows. If you’re twenty-eight and you don’t, then I’m almost positive you just never will.
At least, it’s much harder to discover yourself in your sixties. And as much it would be totally ideal for no one to judge anyone on their appearance, everyone judges you on your appearance. It’s a self care thing-- care enough about yourself to wear unwrinkled clothes, take the extra twenty minutes to put yourself together in the morning. People will be way nicer to you.
If you enjoyed this article, check out 11 Excuses Millennials Need to Stop Making Right Now!