25

I recently turned 25 this summer. It was sort of scary for me (as was the birthday before it), because I feel like even though I'm not even close to being old, a lot of my "stupid years" are behind me. When I say "stupid years," I think everyone knows what I mean. There's a select gap in someone's life where drinking cases of beer and running around town playing pranks with your friends is considered relatively normal. These are the years when it's okay for you to drop classes and change your college major, and it's okay to have four different boyfriends over the course of your sophomore year.

Then you graduate. You get a job (hopefully). You start paying back all of your college loans at ridiculously high interest rates. You try to get your own place and buy some household supplies that aren't a Pizzaz or a beer pong table. You start traveling a little bit if you can afford it.

You're supposed to be becoming an adult. This can be super scary/unappealing for multiple reasons, but here is just a list of things that I love and hate about turning 25:

- I love being done with college. As much as I really enjoyed a lot of my classes, my friends, the relatively care-free schedule, I do not miss being at school and working a full-time job while trying to maintain some sort of social life. It was exhausting being that busy and poor.
-I love paying off all of the debt I accrued. I remember laying awake at night in college imagining my debt going up with compounded interest by the second. I would stare at the ceiling and PRAY that I would be able to pay my loans off before I turned 80 years old.
-I hate people pitying me for not being married with two kids already.
-I love people for respecting me that I made a decision to wait until I finished school, saved and paid off some debt, traveled and did some things for myself, met the right guy, enjoyed time with the right guy, AND then moved onto that phase of my life.
-I love have weekends off.
-I hate paying "big people" bills
-I love owning all of my own stuff, and really accumulating adult things
-I hate that I didn't work out more in college
-I hate working out now
-I hate that I'm supposed to eat like "an adult"
-I love having a 401k and health insurance
-I hate feeling like some of my adventures are going to take a backseat to being responsible the way I'm supposed to be
-I hate living with my parents because it makes me feel like huge baby
-I love living with my parents because I save a butt-ton of money and I get to spend more time with them

That's a pretty good list I think....I feel very torn about my current state of life. I feel very lucky about my current state of life. I feel very unsatisfied at times with my current state of life.

I feel like all of this defines being a 25 year old in my generation.