Grab your hard hat

Get comfortable with a life that's going to be under construction for a while

Jan 02, 2024

4-year-old boy in a construction hat is ready to tackle his own mini-construction project in his backyard — The good old days when my brother used to play pretend before he needed money. He turned the spot my dad was excavating for our above-ground pool into a mini-construction site. Playing grown-up for a day is much more fun than permanently taking on the role. But one of the best things you can do in your 20s is get comfortable with life in a construction zone for a while.

Are you wondering when life will finally start to settle down? It’s not unusual for people who’ve just been turned out into the working world to feel this way. If you had hoped that a milestone event like graduation or a certain number of candles on your birthday cake would mean you’d finally crossed the finish line into a mostly comfortable adulthood, you were sadly mistaken.

The reality is that your life is more likely to resemble a construction zone for most of your 20s. And construction zones are messy, noisy, sometimes frustrating, feature unexpected delays, sometimes need to have things ripped out and done all over again, depend on collaboration with trusted partners for problem-solving, and sometimes require you to come up with novel ways to navigate around obstacles.

When choosing pictures for this week’s piece, I looked for photos of construction projects I’d lived through. Seeing those images was a good reminder about how so many of the worthwhile, larger projects that we tackle in life require things to be messy and unsettled for a while. In fact, when we demolished part of our house in order to reconfigure some of our living space, I started referring to it as “Project Omelet” to remind myself of the old saying that if you want to make an omelet, you need to crack a few eggs.

Construction worker on a lift delivers materials to an old farmhouse undergoing renovations — Though we stood to gain a larger bathroom, a library, and a sleeping porch, along with some general improvements that would make living in our house more pleasant, this major construction involved a lot of planning, decisions, and months of slow but steady progress. Plus, with our old bedroom demolished, my husband and I had to sleep on the pullout sofa in our family room for two months. I took to calling it “Project Omelet” to remind myself of the bigger picture–to make something better suited to our taste, we needed to crack open a few things.

So if you feel a little unsettled as you begin this new year, take heart. Most things–including your life–aren’t built in a day. Your life 10 or 15 years from now will likely resemble more of what you had in mind for your grown-up life. But right now you are in building mode.

Think about all of the aspects of your life under construction:

Career. You may still be in the process of discovering what your professional life’s work will be. And even if you’ve already figured out what you want to be when you grow up, you’re in the beginning stages of assembling a career.

Love, Marriage, and Relationships. If you’ve always pictured yourself happily married, there’s the tricky business of finding a partner who’s a good fit for the long haul. And once you find your soulmate, you must navigate through all that’s required to build a solid foundation for a long-term relationship. Plus there are family relationships and friendships to maintain.

Finding Your Purpose in Life. There must be a reason for why you’re here on planet Earth at this particular time in history. If you believe that God really does have a plan for you, how do you discover what that plan is, especially since sometimes it seems like God keeps that plan top secret and locked in a heavenly file cabinet somewhere? And even if you don’t believe in God, you likely sense that feeling like the trials and tribulations of life serve some purpose will make your life more meaningful. So how do you sort all that out?

Systems for Tactical, Practical Stuff. Now that you’re entirely responsible for the care and feeding of you, there’s so much pesky, get-your-shit-together stuff to figure out. How much money should you be saving for the future? What choices should you make when you enroll for health care and other benefits? How do you get a loan and pay it off responsibly? Do you really need life insurance at your age? And I could go on…

Longer Term Goals. In addition to navigating daily life, you also have to keep an eye on those longer-term goals you might have. For instance, if you’ve always wanted children, when and how will parenthood fit in? If you want to go to grad school or start something entrepreneurial, how and when will you make that happen?
Our kitchen renovation project in progress. After the remodeling company ripped out the old cabinets and appliances, my husband and our dads got to work installing a new floor. As with any construction, the project involved some messy in-between scenes while we made progress toward a new and improved kitchen.

It’s almost too much to take in at one time. But the good news is that you don’t have to. To borrow a metaphor from E.L. Doctorow, it’s like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

As you get more living under your belt, you will benefit from a learning curve. Aspects of your life will gradually settle into place. Your vision for your future will become clearer.

You will discover that much of life requires just doing the next right thing and then making additional decisions as everything unfolds.

I can’t tell you for sure when your life will settle down, but I promise I will be here every week, sharing something to hopefully help you make sense of your big adult life–the Big Picture stuff, the Little Life Lessons, the Career stuff, the Love and Relationship subjects likely on your mind, and some of the Get Your Shit Together stuff that you’re trying to get up-to-speed about.

And I’ll introduce you to others who can also help you to figure it all out. In January’s Book of the Month, The Defining Decade, psychologist Meg Jay draws from more than two decades of work with thousands of clients and students. Weaving in the latest science with behind-closed-doors stories from 20-somethings, it’s all about how to make the most of your 20s.

Not many people enjoy living in a construction zone, but hang in there–it will all be worth it if you’re patient and intentional about what’s being built for the long haul.

Workers stand on beams and near ladders as they begin framing a barn — After a lightning strike sparked a raging blaze that destroyed the upper level of our barn, we hired an Amish firm to rebuild it. Reconstructing a 50-foot by 50-foot barn in genuine post-and-beam style was a massive project. That’s my husband by the ladder consulting with the workers as they framed it out. It reminds me how, with any construction, you have to start somewhere and build a firm foundation.

Tell me what to write about

Front cover of the book The Defining Decade: Why your Twenties matter and how to make the most of them — Click the cover image to go to Bookshop.org, where you can select a local bookstore to support. Your online order will be filled directly by their distributor, and the full profit from your purchase will be sent to your bookstore of choice.

Clinical psychologist Meg Jay believes that your 20s matter. According to Jay, researchers at Boston University and University of Michigan examined dozens of life stories, written by prominent, successful people toward the end of their lives. The researchers found that ‘autobiographically consequential experiences’--the circumstances and people that had the strongest influence on how lives unfolded–were most heavily concentrated during the 20-something years.

Your twenties matter. Eighty percent of life’s most defining moments take place by age thirty-five. Two-thirds of lifetime wage growth happens in the first ten years of a career. More than half of us are married, or dating, or living with our future partner, by age thirty. Personality changes more during our twenties than at any time before or after.

Jay notes, “With about 80 percent of life’s most significant events taking place by age thirty-five, as 30-somethings and beyond, we largely either continue with, or correct for, the moves we made during our 20-something years.”

Jay covers the separate–but interwoven–critical periods that unfold across the twentysomething years and shares what psychologists, sociologists, neurologists, economists, HR execs, and reproductive specialists know about the unique power of the 20-something years She also challenges some media-driven misconceptions about your 20s and shows how common wisdom about the 20-something years is often wrong.

"In the twentysomething years, even a small shift can radically change where we end up in our thirties and beyond. The twenties are an up-in-the-air and turbulent time, but if we can figure out how to navigate, even a little bit at a time, we can get further, faster, than at any other stage in life," says Dr. Meg Jay, author of the book The Defining Decade.

Stay tuned for more snippets from The Defining Decade all this month.

In the olden days, moms used to clip articles from newspapers for their kids if they thought it was something they needed to know. I’m keeping an eye out for things that you might have missed that may be helpful to you.

This week’s clips:

Random acts of kindness significantly impact the receiver's and your own well-being.

Listen or read to learn the modern rules for the age-old chore of laundry from the Laundry Guy himself.

A 20-something confirms social media envy is real. But she says you can use it wisely.

Next Week: Building a solid foundation for your financial house

See what else mom should have told you

Things Your Mom Should Have Told You

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