I have only vague memories of life during my 20s after I moved in with my future wife and her kids. I remember being stressed and busy all the time. I remember working a lot and struggling to pay the bills. I remember our lives being dominated by kids – getting them up for school, helping with homework, caring for them when they were sick, feeding them, cleaning up after them (the kids literally did nothing when it came to chores), doing hours and hours of laundry every weekend after spending all day Saturday cleaning the house.
I remember dealing with their father, struggling to make rent when child support was delayed for 12 months and problems that resulted from his regular visits that disrupted the kids routines, sleep and schooling.
I remember working crappy jobs for low pay while going to night school to try to better my career opportunities.
There were brief interludes during my 20s when things were fun. But mostly those years were full of stress and challenges. There was rarely enough time, money or sleep.
Once I turned 30, everything got better. I was progressing in my professional life and my wife was too. The older child left for college. A year later, we sent my stepson to live with his father in the hopes that it would help with the problems he was having at school and home.
At 30, we became empty nesters. We made many great memories during that decade of my life.
I was thinking about my 20s after listening to a series of podcasts this week that focused on early adulthood. The hosts and guests spent their 20s partying at school. Many extended their adolescence a few more years by remaining in college to get a masters degree. A few ran it out almost into their 30s by getting PhDs.
Those who graduated from college in their early 20s talked about being young, dating, partying, traveling the world and moving up the career ladder. They spoke about moving to destination cities, teaching in foreign countries, vacations with friends in the Caribbean and Europe and having adventures, before settling down in their mid 30s to get married and have kids.
Due to my circumstances and choices, I kind of missed our on that entire decade.
I always thought I was born too late. I thought I would have been ideally suited to have been part of my parents baby boomers generation.
By marrying an older women from that generation who had kids, I got to live like I was part of that generation except I didn’t have the life experience, the wisdom or the maturation of my “older peers”. I was out of my depth.
No wonder I struggled in my 20s. I was in over my head.
Looking back, I’m not sure I’d have done anything differently other than make much better career choices. I was never much of a partier. Nor had I ever considered world travel. It would have been wise to have taken advantage of my youth and brains to become a skilled tradesman, join the military or even become a civil servant with a well defined career path.
But I was young. And stupid. And inexperienced.
So my 20s were atypical.
That turned out to be hard, but in the end, it all worked out fine.