I apologize for being MIA the past couple of weeks. I had started this blog post and hoped to get in out a couple of weeks ago but it got a little hectic in the process.

Life Update!

I’m going to start this post with my life update! Something cheery before we get to the nitty-gritty.

During the past year we’ve been looking into buying a house. I even had it at the top of my yearly bucket list for last year! I didn’t even really know where to start when it came to buying a house. I knew that it was a process. More than just touring homes and picking the one you like. I didn’t consider the difficulty of the housing market, of course.

The first thing I did was get in touch with a loan officer just to see if I was in a good position, financially and credit-wise to buy a house. Our loan officer was amazing and made the whole process so smooth for us! I got preapproved for a really reasonable home loan! Which is something that most realtors require before even showing you a home. And so the hunt began.. It was a bit of a tough journey. A lot of disappointments and almosts but I stuck with the mantra; “If it’s meant to be, it will be.” Months later, during our process it was brought to my attention that my grandfathers house was being renovated for sale. It is a sweet 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom home with an unfinished basement. The perfect amount of complete that gives us just enough space to make it ours.

After some consideration, we decided to purchase my grandfathers home. Which has been in the family for 50 years! How amazing! This home is very special to my family. It was the first house that my dad, who moved around a lot as a child considered home/ And that means more than anything to me.

So we are officially homeowners! I can’t wait to give you guts reno updates and all of my amazon buys! (hehe)

Societal Expectations

Now that the good news is over, time to get to the real reason I wanted to write today! I have been trying to think of a way to write this blog post for a while. I was in the middle of writing one blog post when I remembered a different one in my drafts that hit on a similar subject. It was simply a post about the challenges of your 20s. The standards that we young adults are held to and how it effects us mentally.

I’m 24. I’ll be 25 in just a few months. So I’m almost slam in the middle of my 20s. Being a young adult in today’s society can for some reason feel like you have all of this pressure on you. You feel like in this decade you have to make so many life choices for your future, making it feel like every month is a new life event. It’s a whirlwind and quite honestly it’s a little anxiety-inducing.

Before my latest event. I had felt like my life was at a stand still.

I feel like you can’t help but compare yourself to your peers which is so hard because everyone’s at different levels in their lives and their relationships. Seeing your peers do things such as getting married, having babies, purchasing homes, graduating college… Makes you feel like if you’re not doing that then you’re missing out. Even with the knowledge that everyone’s timeline is different and you cannot compare your life to someone else’s.

As a woman, it’s more apparent to me that society puts all of this pressure on women especially to have children in their twenties because of this “biological timeclock” that makes us feel like our time to give birth will time out at 30. Which gives us this pressure to secure a life partner in that time frame when there’s so much more to also prioritize. It’s a time to finish school, start (hopefully) your lifelong career. Imagine you’re 18, graduating high school and you pursue a four year degree, then you’re 22. If you want to get your masters or even your doctorate that’s another 2-4 years meaning you’ll be 26 and then often times there’s more time that you need in your field for education so that might add even more time depending on what you decide. It’s hard to establish your career while also maintaining a degree. Women do it everyday and I am so proud of them for that! But that doesn’t make it any more easier.

I’m not going to lie, I was on a baby kick for a minute thinking it was time to think about having another one. Which the rise of “covid babies” or as I’ve seen them called “coron-ials” (lol) I see a lot of my friends and coworkers getting pregnant and becoming mothers and as a woman, I just naturally want a baby too. Yes, I have a little girl but she’s eight and it’s a different feeling having a little baby in your arms. I love on my little girl like she is one but it’s just not quite the same. It doesn’t help that I get the question constantly “when are you going to have another one?”After a lot of thought, I realized that I have a lot of things I want to accomplish before having another baby. Certain things that to me give me more of a sense of stability such as buying a home, getting married and earning another degree. They’re not essential but they’re just things I want to check off beforehand.

Another pressure point I hit in my life was to get married a year after our engagement. Meanwhile, it’s been almost 3 years. Our original plan was to get married in 2020 but that didn’t happen for obvious reasons and since then I haven’t been very motivated to reschedule. There’s a lot of things to reconsider now when planning a wedding and it’s just sort of taken the backburner for now. I bought the dress of my dreams a few months after we got engaged and I wanted to have a big wedding with lots of friends and family there. I pictured a beautiful weekend at the beach surrounded by loved ones and before I knew it, that all changed.

I feel a peace thinking that it will come when we are ready. It will be perfect no matter the venue or the amount of people. We are just going to enjoy our engagement as it is while we decide on what we really want to do.

If you think about the big picture, aside from babies and marriage and all of the adult things in life. There’s so much more a young person can pursue. There’s so much of the world out there to experience and feeling like you have to conform yourself to a small space of adult responsibilities can be kind of depressing. So there’s no reason a young person should feel so much anxiety and worry of the life steps. The sweet things in life will come at the right time. I advise anyone to use their youth to expand their knowledge and experience life in others ways such as traveling and exploring the wonderful world for what it is. Don’t feel so conformed to what everyone else is doing.

It’s okay not to be married.

It’s okay not to have your career in place.

It’s okay to not be ready to buy a home

or have a baby.

It’s okay not to have a partner yet.

It’s okay to take time to figure it all out.

Do life at your own pace and don’t compare your life to others.

What is meant to be, will be.

I’m going to double up this weeks writing to make up for the last few weeks xx

with love,

c.p