{"id":13867,"date":"2022-07-02T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-02T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/?p=13867"},"modified":"2022-09-26T15:40:50","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T10:10:50","slug":"turning-22-the-age-i-decide-to-stop-caring-about-aging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/02\/turning-22-the-age-i-decide-to-stop-caring-about-aging\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning 22 – The age I decide to stop caring about aging"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the last six months or so, my mind has been an anxious mess bouncing between two thoughts: I\u2019m gonna be 22 and have decades of youthful experiences in front of me<\/em> and I\u2019m turning 22 and I can\u2019t believe I still haven\u2019t done this and I still don\u2019t have that.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did turning 22 hold a special meaning for me? <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Well, I wanted to be the Taylor Swift song. I wanted to have that energy. I wanted to feel young and going through some angsty drama in my life and feel like a free bird and whatnot. More than any other age I had turned previously, I had this belief that my 22 would be good (I\u2019m well aware that thinking your favourite singer\u2019s song will somehow make your life amazing is irrational but do you think I care?) I think what hurts the most is that I had this faith in myself that I would somehow turn my life around by 22. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And did I? Honestly, I\u2019m so confused about my life right now that I don\u2019t even know how to answer that question. So I won\u2019t try to right now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess I can simplify it and just focus on the having fun aspect at turning such an age. Who thought having fun would be so tough? Well, it is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I\u2019m finally giving up. It’s less than ten days to my 22nd birthday. Sure, I\u2019ll make some plans to have a nice day, but beyond that, I\u2019m dropping my heightened expectations. More than that, what I\u2019ve realized I need to really do is stop thinking about how old I am.<\/span> I\u2019ve been hyper-focused on what I have done and what I haven\u2019t done every year that has passed since I turned 18. It\u2019s partly the pandemic\u2019s fault. I turned 20 in the pandemic, and now I\u2019m 22. It really feels like that span of time just slipped from our hands. Whatever the reason may be\u2014social media, the pandemic, or my high-achieving personality\u2014I am realizing I really really need to let go of the idea of age because it’s doing me more harm than good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever I think of trying something new, travelling to a place, learning a new skill, doing a course, etc., my brain automatically wants to decide what is the shortest time span I can accomplish that in. Six months? One year? Two years? It\u2019s like my brain almost thinks I won\u2019t live beyond the age of 25. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it a gen Z thing that we simply don\u2019t comprehend that real benefits are only reaped from long-term processes? There is so much I want to do and many things I\u2019ve started, but I feel like I don\u2019t make real progress because I don\u2019t set up routines, and it doesn\u2019t register in my mind that things take time. A lot of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also this sense of \u201cmy life is over\u201d or \u201cthis is all there is for me.\u201d I know it is very very stupid to feel such a way at 22 when the average human life is 70-80 years\u2014but I feel how I feel. I guess all I\u2019m trying to do is tell myself that I really need to change my mindset. Right now, I feel that I completely need to let go of the concept of age, in order to actually just live my life and do whatever I want. Not feel bound by numbers, not focus on the time I\u2019ve lost, or worry that I won\u2019t have time in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, you just need to live as a human. Not as a student or a writer or a parent or a 20-year-old or a woman. Sometimes, you need to not factor in these labels that you hold when you make decisions. Sometimes, you need to forget you\u2019re 22, and you need to just be glad that you\u2019re alive and you exist\u2014and live however you can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connect with me on Instagram<\/a> | Twitter<\/a> | Goodreads<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last six months or so, my mind has been an anxious mess bouncing between two thoughts: I\u2019m gonna be 22 and have decades of youthful experiences in front of me and I\u2019m turning 22 and I can\u2019t believe…<\/p>\n

Continue reading ➞ Turning 22 – The age I decide to stop caring about aging<\/span><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,1],"tags":[542,543],"class_list":["post-13867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous","category-my-writings","category-uncategorized","tag-aging","tag-birthday"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/levi-guzman-zdSoe8za6Hs-unsplash-scaled.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12351,"url":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/2020\/06\/13\/my-year-as-a-swiftie-and-what-taylor-swift-taught-me\/","url_meta":{"origin":13867,"position":0},"title":"My Year As A Swiftie and What Taylor Swift Taught Me","date":"June 13, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"A few weeks ago, I was cleaning my room while rapping to Taylor Swift. 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Anyways,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Miscellaneous"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51Vb90Q1SlL._SX324_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13867"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13880,"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867\/revisions\/13880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travellingthroughwords.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}