Slow Down You Crazy Child

It's official, as marked by my annual crying to Billy Joel’s ‘Vienna’, it’s almost my birthday. In a month, I will be 27 years old. Before all of my readers over 30 roll their eyes, I know I’m still young. However, 27 is hitting hard and the consensus among my friends is that 27 does feel different, it is the official gate of your late 20s.

If you’re unfamiliar with the song I cry to as my birthday approaches, ‘Vienna’, it is that Billy Joel song that plays over every montage in every rom-com released between 1990 and 2010. You know that song that plays when the romantic lead is driving away and crying, debating whether or not to turn around? Yeah, that’s the one. It has the horridly rude lyric, “slow down you’re doing fine, you can’t be everything you want to be before your time” and it gets me every time.

To be fair, it’s a good piece of advice, slow down and realize that not everything has to happen right away, right when you want it to. However, I still thought I would have accomplished a lot more by now than I have. At 26 I grew up, but I still thought that after growing up I’d be more than I am right now.

While 26, I moved into a beautiful apartment in a big city with an old sorority sister who soon became one of my closest friends. I was able to reconnect with a lot of my old friends and meet new ones. I went on some great dates and I went on some really bad dates and learned how to use my voice when I needed to. I got the best haircut of my life, bought clothes that I felt like I could never wear, and learned how to properly self-tan (honestly thank goodness). Most importantly, I got a promotion, showed my true colors as a leader, and wrote a ton of incredible content.

But, I didn’t publish a book. I didn’t go on a girl’s trip. I didn’t fall in love. I didn’t get a boyfriend. I didn’t get my master’s. I didn’t go dancing. I didn’t wear a lot of the clothes that I bought that I thought I could never wear.

As I’m about to turn 27 I’m questioning a lot of why these things haven’t happened, and with that thought, in combination with Billy Joel, I’ve shed a few tears. I am writing this while drinking a glass of rose, one that came from a bottle over ten dollars because I can do that now, so I apologize if this starts to read apathetically.

One of the things I ruminate on as I turn 27, is that I did college wrong. I transferred from a big shiny city school to a small liberal arts school and I loved everything about where I graduated from. From an academic perspective, I wouldn’t do anything different. Socially, however, I became friends with a lot of great people and exceptionally close to none. I have a lot of friends from college but no “friends from college”, no core group of people that I’ll invite to my bachelorette party. Why ‘bachelorette party’ is my marker of closeness I have literally no idea. That is not to discount the amazing friends I made but I’m left without a ‘group’ so to speak.

I have two really close friends that I’ve had for over twenty years and they are absolutely incredible. We get annoyed with each other like sisters, are there for each other like sisters, and cheer for each other like sisters, but we are all in different parts of life and the city. I appreciate them more than I could possibly explain, they are my best friends, but they are not my Saturday night “what’s the move?” friends.

While something in my head nags me that this is incorrect, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the friendships you have and the ones you are creating. There are a lot of people that I will love and will love me that I haven’t met yet. I remind myself weekly that Instagram stories are not real life, its okay if you do too.

At 26, I became really, really, good friends with myself. That was the best thing I could have ever done. I can spend time watching Bridgerton on the couch on a Friday while reading my book and love every second.

I have become content enough in being by myself that I have a strictness about who I let in. Girls are always welcome, I love being a friend, but boys can come and go at my say. This has been an incredible part of being 26, gaining the idea that I’m not looking for them to like me, but determining if I like them. I like me, I’m very cool, but they may not be someone who I want in my life. The absolute power you wield when you decide that your opinion is the imperative one, is astronomical. Yet, in doing so, I have to be patient for the right person I’d like to invite into my life as a partner. So, I’m single.

For some reason, being 27 and single seems incorrect. It’s not, it’s never wrong to be single. It just feels like my younger self would wonder what I did wrong to end up here. Fourteen-year-old me is not the authority of right and wrong though so she can take several seats, even if she chooses to remind me I have no boyfriend.

While I have not published a book, something that my brain loves to nag me about, I am proving myself at work on the daily and that is pretty darn cool too. I have found my voice as a leader even though it’s not in my official title. You can lead no matter the job title, even if you’re only leading yourself. That’s the best piece of career advice I’ve ever been given, and the best I can give. I’d like to thank my Girl Scout troop for that.

The book thing really stings though. I was once in my early 20s sitting in a Yale library absolutely killing it with a piece, hammering out the best string of words again and again. Now I’m about to be 27 and I’ve only ever gotten rejection letters. It doesn’t matter how many times I read Stephen King’s advice on collecting rejection letters as badges of honor, it still sucks to know you’ve yet to fulfill a dream.

I’ve been working on a collection of short stories inspired by music for a couple of years now and it’s just not coming to fruition the way I thought it would. I won’t give up on it, but there feels like a clock is ticking in the background of my daily life. I fear I won’t publish in my lifetime and the impending possibility of war, climate change, or even the movement of my life into other responsibilities makes that clock tick faster with less time.

In the grand scheme of things, 27 is incredibly young. It’s a different age now than it was in years past but the looming genre of ‘Late 20s’ hangs over the head nonetheless, and that’s perfectly okay. It could very well just be that 27 is not “yet my time” to “be everything I want to be.”

Billy Joel didn’t write Vienna until 28.