“I don’t know where to start. I guess it’s worth saying that I’ve always known, in some way or another. When I was younger, my choices leaned toward the feminine: I liked pink cars, female video game characters, and imagining I was Kimberly from The Power Rangers. I settled into my maleness after my father broke down at Walmart over the Barbie doll I had begged him to buy me. When we got in the car, he asked me what he did wrong. I was nine.

“When I was fourteen, I was awkward and shy, but I helped with the stage crew after school. One day I stayed after and found out there was no practice, but it was too late to catch the bus. I hung out in the hallway, reading a book, and this guy from my grade finished up with basketball practice. He sat down next to me and joked with me. He told me we should meet more often.

“So we did. After the Autumn showcase, I neglected to tell my mom there was no more play practice. Each week, we met and we talked. One day, he said he wanted to show me something, and he walked me back to a locker room. It sounds like something out of porn, but it was sweet. He kissed me like people kiss each other in movies. It lasted for maybe ten minutes, and then we thought we heard a noise, and we got out of there.

“He was the first boy I loved. He’s married now, to a woman. She seems happy, and so does he. I would like to believe he loved me too, though. I’m just glad it happened. Whether he knows it or not, he showed me that there isn’t anything about me I need to run from.“

– D.

I remember, at fifteen, the night our Driver’s Ed instructor stood at the front of the class and begged us to take a good, hard look at the ‘invincibility complex’ of the teenage years. Driving recklessly is a fatal act, I’m sure she was trying to say, even for those of us facing seemingly infinite futures.

It is perhaps because the twenties follow the teens that I say this, but the impermanence of everything has never been more evident to me than in my twenty-something years. Maybe, as we make a break with these notions of immortality, we must also begin to accept the realities of impermanence. We are fragile, and time is fleeting. Here’s what awaits you in our twenties, my friends:

The friends you went to high school with? They’re going to move, start families, begin careers, and become different people (if they haven’t already). You’ll still ‘like’ some of their stuff on social media, but the gulf between your worlds will remain.

The holiday meal you always spend with your Dad’s side of the family? That’s getting cumbersome, with generations of people squeezing past one another in a house, and it’s only a matter of time until your parents and aunts and uncles look at each knowingly, nodding in agreement that ‘this is the last one.’

Your favorite local pizza place? Ol’ Joe is looking to retire and move to sunny Boca, so it’s going to be renovated into a Quizno’s, which – despite making steam emerge from your ears – will please the youths. (Do the youths still like Quizno’s?)

As your twenties pick up, as you exit school and enter your first and second jobs, you’ll likely change scenery and the cast of characters in your life will evolve. There may be a few constants, but most of your friends’ lives were meant to intertwine with your own for just a moment. Life keeps moving, pushing, changing the world around you.

And that’s what we learn: Nothing is forever, least of all us. We are here for an unspecified and unguaranteed amount of time, and all the dreams we concocted in our invincible years start to look a bit like hourglasses. Which ones matter? Follow those, but don’t hustle too hard: You won’t get the world, as it is, for very much longer.

One night, in hopes of burning some time before a movie, my friend Chris and I traveled to the wondrous world of Target. Equipped with a peculiar blend of purposelessness and adventure, we wandered the supermarket with open eyes. What do you have to offer? we asked the shelves.

It was then that my friend found, and suggested I read, Tell the Wolves I’m Home.

Continue reading “book club: ‘tell the wolves i’m home’.” →

An important to thing to note, in this series, is that my education path has the following progression: I completed K-12, moved to a four-year public university and graduated in four years, and then I completed a two-year graduate program. Regardless of your educational path, however, there comes a point when you realize you’ve run out of script. For me, the first hints of this came when I decided to go to graduate school in lieu of the workforce. After graduate school, upon entering my first job, I realized the script was mine to write.

It sounds simple, but the twenties generally bring about the first time in your life when all the realities of your life – your place of work, the city/town you inhabit, the people you surround yourself with, the vehicle you drive (if you drive), – become yours to choose.

There are more mundane choices, too. In July 0f 2014, I found myself choosing a retirement plan, an insurance option, whether or not to opt into vision insurance, a local dentist and physician, whether or not to sign with a gym, which vacation days to utilize… Where did all this freedom come from?

For me, the ‘running out of script’ feeling has been real. Holding the pen to author your life is, at first, a terrifying prospect. What if we make the wrong decision? Will I be glad, when I look back on my twenties, that I spent them doing this? Living here? What really matters? How am I living with the answer to that question in mind?

Here it is: After all the schooling, the training, and the dreaming, your twenties hand you the pen with which to write your life. It’s a liberating experience, yes, but it’s also a bit harrowing. But we can do it, because we’re doing it. We’re gonna make it, twenty-somethings. We’re gonna write this story.

“Wait, Michael,” you might be saying, “Maybe this is more of a you thing that you’re projecting as a universal truth so that you can deal with the fact that you annoy your co-workers.” I hear you, and I’ll own that it’s a possibility, but hear me out.

The twenties, for most, mark a time of entering the workforce and beginning a career. Fresh off of whatever schooling was mandated, the twenty-something taking their first position is often ambitious, driven, and eager to prove that they were worth the hire. Having grown up with workplace sitcoms, we twenty-somethings approach our first jobs with hopes of making friends and doing good things.

Here’s the reality: You are somebody’s colleague nightmare. Maybe you come to work with a smile and a cup of coffee each day, but your cubicle-mate notices you don’t ever arrive quite on time. Maybe you are dependable and reliable, answering every e-mail with lightning precision and creating workplace efficiency flow like none other, but your project manager notes you’re harmful for team morale. Maybe you are passionate and contribute solid ideas, but the three people sitting behind you in that meeting think you like to hear yourself speak. Maybe you’re a team player who creates waves with nobody, but somebody on your task force thinks you’re a schmoozer with very little vision. Your co-workers are going to find your ‘but.’ 

The reality is that the process of teamwork and cooperation is, and always has been, a pretty challenging undertaking. Because the twenty-something years typically mark the introduction to a workplace setting, they are also the years we are figuring out our identity as an employee. It may be tough to hear, but there is a ‘but’ about your approach to work.

There are two keys, I think, to moving forward with this information: (1) Own the feedback, but (2) don’t dim your shine.

Own the feedback. It’s important to be self-reflective and to understand that you probably wouldn’t mind what your co-workers are telling you (or each other) if there wasn’t some truth to it. Your weaknesses will not be erased, and hiding them is temporary at best, so it seems helpful to acknowledge them, to work against them when possible, and to apologize for them when necessary.

Don’t dim your shine. Sometimes there is an additional ‘but,’ that sounds more like this: ‘But I’m only picking at that because you’re such a good problem-solver that it makes me feel insecure.’ ‘But I wish I could network like that; it doesn’t come naturally to me.’ ‘But I don’t know how to put people at ease like that.’ ‘But you always seem to know what you’re doing, and it makes me unsure.’ You can’t take all the feedback, or you’ll always be in evaluation mode and you won’t get anything done. Trust your brand. Accept that it’s going to annoy somebody.

I made it 25 years into my life without ever being too much of a mess. I grew up approaching life a little bit like crossing rocks in a river: careful, tentative steps and eyes on the horizon for hazards. It was exactly this tendency, during my emergence into young adulthood, that landed me in occasional hot water with friends and family: You think you’re perfect. You always do the right thing. I don’t want to disappoint you. It was isolating, occasionally, but I shrugged it off. I was there to help people through their mess, which was easy, as I had very little.

My first foray into messy, ambiguous territory came when I realized I was gay. The coming out process is unique to every LGBT+ person, but it’s generally a universally big mess to manage. There are a lot of people to tell, many of whom are going to make it about themselves, and it might involve a few chips to the support system. The act of declaring oneself, of professing one’s very heart, should not involve the concept of ‘damage control,’ but it often does.

Despite the messiness, however, I moved forward with insistent commitment to my life strategy: Plan it out, bring it to life, help everybody put the pieces together, group hug, and hope for the best. And not everything was perfect. Things were hard, the mess was a bit out of my purview, and my support system took a few hits. But I kept my shit together.

At 25, I failed at my relationship and struggled to find the ground. I struggled to eat, avoided my bed for the better part of a month, and I got really into Taylor Swift. After 25 years of ‘having it together’ and ‘having a plan’ so that everybody else could feel calm, I was a hot. damn. mess. And, in that process, I had to rely on my friends for support and trust them to love me anyway. It was hard, being truly vulnerable, and I missed the feeling of being the shoulder rather than needing it, but I found myself in that process. I found the broken pieces inside of me and figured out that they didn’t erase my worthiness.

I bring this up because the twenty-somethings are going to come along with some mess: We are emerging adults making our way into the world, and we are – at best – trying to ‘fake it until we make it.’ Nobody’s immune from the breaks, from the mess, from the failures.

The key is, I think, to help each other through. I’ve learned to put my judgment to rest, to hear my friends and family out as they share about their latest mistakes. I’m going to need them to love me through mine, so I’ll love them through theirs, and not in any kind of distant, holier-than-thou way. Nobody’s immune from the mess, twenty-somethings. We’re all still learning to walk on our own.

In May of 2012, I graduated from college with the best of friends. Commencement week was a blur of celebrations and nostalgia, toasts to the world we built here together, and a mess of excitement and apprehension about the big What’s Next. We lived off of microwave S’mores, Diet Coke and Jim Beam, and an appalling lack of sleep. Hugging one another, whispering goodbyes, we embarked from college and into our true twenties.

It’s been four years, almost, since that time. It feels like yesterday. Those four years have brought us all our own adventures – for me, graduate school and my first professional job. For all of us, broken plans and new dreams, struggles with life and love and the pursuit of happiness. I am very nearly 27, and I have to ask: How in the world did this happen?

Even now, when I think about the four years that were my high school experience, I remember time moving along with a gentle, reassuring thrum of predictability. Days dragged, months dragged further, and the journey to that diploma felt hard-won.

College was a journey in its own right. Embarking from home, discovering the giants in the sky, figuring out who I was. I remember it went faster than I expected, but it felt manageable. They were four epic years (it was cool to say things were ‘epic’ then), and we had ‘done college right.’

But I never did quite get my feet to the rhythm of the past four years. Grad school ripped by underfoot at a breakneck pace, and it feels like I started this job – this new adventure – mere weeks ago.

A secret to the twenty-something years: Life picks up. The train starts ripping forward, and it pays no mind to the fact that we don’t know what we’re doing. Facebook friends begin families, nostalgia channels start playing the shows we grew up to, and memories of our good college years start to sound like our parents’ stories.

“‘Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks.’ – Yo-Yo Mama

“I’m very passionate about helping people, my significant other, and Batman (maybe not in that order). I’m in love with the  process of improving at yoga, the ideals of self-improvement, and being a mentor to those that will have me. I can rave about thing things I love for days and days; I’m frenzied about the process of gaining more understanding of those things that light my soul on fire. My passion is my flow. I feel beautiful when I’m engaging in the things I’m obsessed with. Passion is one of the two primary emotions that makes me tick.

“‘Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before.’ – Elizabeth Edwards

“Some days passion isn’t there. I wish it always was. I can’t lust after progress every day, even if it involves something I’m always in love with. I’m only human, and humans at their most basic are still complicated. Some days my soul isn’t on fire, and I don’t feel beautiful. Those are the days my energy comes from a fuel that every spirited person should have in reserves: Resilience.

–

“I grind until the day is over. The passion always comes back, but not if I stop moving. Learning about how we as humans hurt each other, arguing with my significant other, watching Batman & Robin. These aren’t things I crave to do every day. My yoga practice will regress, some days I don’t improve, and there are times I don’t have the energy to give to a mentee. I can’t will myself to be to be lustful of the process.. I can be resilient, show up, and still do the work that leads to things I’m passionate about. I always remember in times of need that Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy wouldn’t exist without the worst moments of the 90’s Batman movies. My weakest moments in my relationship create the strongest long-term bonds. Sacrifices must be made to capture the queen on a chessboard. My base emotions can be pawns to a greater cause.

“Resilience is the peanut butter, passion is the jelly, my body is the bread. Resilience holds everything together, passion makes everything sweet and textured, and without my body none of the emotions matter. It all makes for one delicious sandwich, but one component without the others isn’t worth eating. In a world filled so many great sandwiches, eating a shitty sandwich is a great sacrifice.

“Stay passionate. Stay resilient. Keep making a difference.”

– T

A friend of mine once told me, after reading a piece I’d written, that it wasn’t my best work. It might’ve been cathartic, she told me, but it was detached. Unemotional. ‘Your best work,’ she told me, ‘is somewhere between hilarious and heartbreaking.’

The same friend, somebody who has always seen into me a bit more than most people do, recommended that I read Everything Matters!

Continue reading “book club: ‘everything matters!’” →

A little over a week ago, I was in my car listening to a new playlist, and one of them – ‘Hold Each Other’ by A Great Big World – caught my attention about halfway through. The singer, it seemed, was singing about love – and he was using male pronouns. Pressing the track back a bit, I listened more closely:

Everything looks different now
All this time my head was down
He came along and showed me how to let go
I can’t remember where I’m from
All I know is who I’ve become
That our love has just begun like ohhh

Something happens when I hold him
He keeps my heart from getting broken
When the days get short and the nights get a little bit frozen
We hold each other, we hold each other
Continue reading “a song for us.” →