I have begun to not want to take time off. I have begun to not want to travel, nor enjoy a weekend of not doing anything. Getting too drunk serves only as a reminder of time wasted when wasted. Every time I take out my sketchbook and set of fine liner pens, I ask myself how I can draw or write something that will advance my creative work and my endeavors towards becoming the artist, actor, writer I have always wanted to be.
Perhaps millennials simply cannot afford hobbies. We all live in the ‘rise and grind’ mindset enforced onto us alongside the concerns of ‘making something of ourselves’ before we finish the third decade of our lives. We all seek to profit off all we do or make. My friends forge jewelry out of polymer clay and guitar strings help pay their rents. I sit in the waiting room of my OBGYN in Flatbush and play with ideas of how to incorporate the experience of a yearly pap smear into an essay to post onto my blog. We have, after all, been referred to as ‘Generation Burnout’. Thus, perhaps my inability to stop working simply a side effect of being born between 1981 and 1996, or it could be that my inability to stop attempting to move forward is due to my too immediate realization that I too, am getting older and fearful that I am running out of time.
A person I dated briefly looked at some photographs stuck onto the wall by my apartment window with blu-tack. One photo that struck his attention was of me aged nineteen seated next to my father in an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. The photo was taken during Thanksgiving break, my first year of university.
“How old were you there?” The man in my apartment asked me.
“Nineteen” Was my truthful response.
“Wow.” He glanced from nineteen-year-old me tacked on the wall to my current twenty-four-year-old self standing before him. “You’ve aged.”
I didn’t see him again after that.
As hurtful as the comment my date made was, it was a somewhat accurate observation, considering that I am no longer nineteen and have not been nineteen for half a decade. And, as is a natural progression, I have aged. I’ve started seeing a chiropractor. I have to get yearly screenings for types of illnesses I always considered myself to be too young to be in danger of contracting. My dark under-eye circles make me consider painting on a full face of make up every day. More than anything, I have begun to fear my own age. I have begun to fear the passing of time, approaching the day of my birth that, instead of acting as a celebration, consequentially adds a higher number to my age. My birthday serves as a reminder that another year has passed and I am still not holding my first novel in my hands. That I have not had that big break through role as an actor that has put me in the minds of casting directors and agents.
We are educated to believe that the third decade of our lives, our twenties, are all we have to make something of ourselves. And yet, that pressure to form our lives completely within a span of ten years is put upon us during the period of our lives where we are just beginning to figure out who we are as independent humans. As I approach my twenty-fifth birthday, I am still discovering things about myself that go beyond the professional life I am attempting to make for myself. And there are moments when I am able to find peace with the fact that figuring out who I am is currently just as beneficial as ‘making it’ or in fact, making myself into somebody. But even with that understanding, I still ache when I see my fellow twenty-four-year old’s get nominated for Oscars and handed publishing deals.
It must be noted that an anvil called the Coronavirus Pandemic has been dropped on all citizens of the Earth, but has been particularly devesting to those in their twenties whose lives are just beginning. How can careers be made when entire industries have shut down? How can one make a profession in theatre or arts when there is currently no such thing?
The philosophers who made themselves known as ‘The Stoics’ often wrote of the realistic yet universally spoken understanding of the fact that life simply isn’t fair. Seneca himself spoke of fortune being the ‘most powerful force on earth’ that unfortunately ‘acts as she pleases’. I attempt to consider this through my frustrations as I inch into my mid-twenties. And simultaneously try to remind that life does not in fact have a finish line.
Life is not fair. It was not fair that the year I moved to New York to pursue a post-college career in theatre the entire New York theatre scene shut down due to COVID-19. It is not fair the period that I have been told would be the ‘best years of my life’ have been taken from me due to the same virus. It is certainly not at all fair that people have lost their jobs, apartments and loved ones due to a mishandled worldwide pandemic. But as the stoics would say, how do we choose to move forward through what we cannot control?
With the knowledge of the stoics, I return to the concept of ‘making it’. Truly, the concept of ‘making it’ is a lie. Because what exactly would I be making? What is ‘it’? I have lived on this planet for close to a quarter of a century and the trajectory of my ambitions shift each day. The most expansive lesson I carry with me into my mid-twenties is the notion that the work never ends, and it will not end after my thirtieth birthday. Fortune and fate may be cruel mistresses, and I may spend days bemoaning my lack of recognition in my current place, bemoaning the fact that life just is not fair. But how productive is that really?
I may not land where I want to in the next six years. I may not have the acknowledgement for my art that I crave now before this chapter of my life known as my twenties is over. So why put a time limit on my chance to become the artist and person I want to become? Why constrain my possibilities to a single decade? Why are there not more celebrations for people who publish their first novels, win that big award or find love later in life?
A family friend, who happened to be an extremely well renowned actor, once spoke these words to me: ‘One day your ship will come, just make sure you’re on the dock to meet it’. Stay healthy, stay present, engage with the world. Engage with life.
The world will not stop moving, and I will not stop aging just because I’m frustrated. One day my boat will come, and it may not be taking me to the destination I initially planned on heading to, but I certainly don’t want to miss that trip.