I can’t deny it any longer, I am getting old. I’m around 60 days out from the big two-five and don’t I know it . It seems as though everyone around me needs to remind me of the prehistoric age that I am rapidly approaching. And yet on the cusp of 25 I don’t really feel much different than I did at 20.

I have a friend who is a few years older than me and to be fair to him, I was warned about the so-called ‘quarter-life crisis’ and that it would eventually catch me. Did I listen? No, of course not, I just laughed and said “Ha! Okay old man.” It’s not so funny now is it? The other day I walked into the staff room at work, where I had the absolute pleasure of being told that I was one of the oldest members of staff on shift that day. Thanks guys, very cool. We’re a relatively young workforce too but being reminded that I was going to university when some of my colleagues were starting secondary school was a bit of a gut punch.

Maybe I don’t feel my age because of my job. I thought that by 25 I would be married, have a career and have my own house. Honestly, how could I be so foolish. Somehow getting a degree won’t save you from being stuck in hospitality purgatory and at 25 you will still be working a crappy part time job, while still living at home because you can’t afford to move out with the miniscule amount of money that you actually earn. All while sacrificing your evenings and weekends to serve moaning old gits when you are supposed to be out at the ‘clurb’ being ‘young and turnt.’ I can feel the remainder of my youth slipping away… I don’t let myself get too down about my job situation though. At least I have one.

I guess I could always take the route my Grandma suggests, get married, have a kid and then I won’t have to work anymore! What an amazing idea, why didn’t I think of that. Probably because that sort of housewife existence doesn’t really exist anymore and feel free to call me too woke but maybe as a woman I want more in life than just to be someones mum.Maybe I would like to be able to do things for myself and not to say that children tie you down but maybe there are still things that I would like to do without the added responsibility of looking after a child. But then again maybe I’m just selfish for not giving her a great-grandchild, who knows.

Apparently the most important thing about turning 25 is that your frontal lobe finally finishes developing, which seems to be a big deal. It means that your brain has fully matured and however you are at 25 is how it will be for the rest of your life. How scary. Luckily though this isn’t completely true because modern neuroscience reckons your brain keeps refining itself well into your 30s, so not all hope is lost. Maybe by 35 my brain will have worked itself out properly.

25 does not feel fun. It feels like my life is going to be over and that I’m hitting some sort of expiration date. I’m hitting the finish line with hardly any achievements to show for it and it’s all going to be downhill from here. I wonder why it has been collectively decided that you have to have it all together by the time you’re 25? Maybe it’s because of people pushing the idea that your brain just magically reaches peak development once you hit the age, or maybe it’s because of closer to home examples in my life, like my parents. They were married, had their own careers and their own home by 25, although I didn’t come along until a few years later, they were actual established adults. I barely feel like an adult. There have been times where I have felt like one but for the majority of the time I feel like a tall child. I’m not saying nowadays that it’s impossible to become a fully-fledged adult by the age of 25 but it certainly seems harder.

My early adulthood was marred by a worldwide pandemic, I turned 18 just 2 months before the world shut down. My university experience was sub-par, I don’t have many friends my age, we couldn’t socialise and build those ‘lifelong friendships.’ As most of the course content was taught online,people dropped out as it was deemed not worth it and sometimes in retrospect it seems that way to me too. By the time you’ve finished your degree and  you’ve got a load of debt and you need a job to live, that’s exactly when AI starts to take off so no one really wants to hire a graduate. And why would they? They can just get a machine to do it for free. So the number of foot-in-the-door office jobs dwindled and then you end up in a job where the machine can’t do the work, so you work in hospitality.

As a result we end up here, 24 years, nine months and 25 days old, a total of 9064 days so far. No career, no house of my own, no drivers license. A family who loves me, a roof over my head, friends who want me around, a partner whom I adore, a dog who’s always happy to see me. The confidence to travel alone, my own set of values, a personal sense of style, interests and hobbies to spend time on, the world at my feet, my whole life ahead of me. Wait a second, maybe turning 25 won’t be so bad after all.