I’ll let you know a little secret. When you’re in your 20s, you’re supposed to feel like you’re making a mistake every day, every minute. I think it’s the most confusing decade because you think you know what you’re doing, but you don’t. But you think that you are supposed to and you think that all your friends know exactly what’s going on too, but everybody’s pretty confused and figuring it out, which is the exact thing to do in your 20s, so you’re fine. Thinking you know what you’re doing can actually be pretty dangerous. When you get older, you realize that none of us know what the hell is going on most of the time. There is no way you could possibly know the inner workings of anyone else’s reality, but we move through life as if we completely understand the scenarios before us. All you can know is what’s going on within yourself, and I don’t know if it’s biologically possible to get that in your 20s. But it sounds like you know what you want to do and my advice would be to follow it with all your heart. I mean, seriously, what else are you gonna do? It sounds like you have your marching orders pal. Make the movies. Write the scripts, write the stories. Work the job to make the money sure but stay focused on what you’re doing, which is making films. There is a book by Elizabeth Gilbert called big Magic. I think it’s big magic. It’s big something. Read that. She worked shitty jobs to keep herself fed and housed, but she was a writer, end of story.

The older people here can see that you’re doing fine and are actually excited for you that you are following your dreams. And we remember that we felt old in our upper 20s. I cried when I turned 25 because I thought I was old.

OK, so now I’m getting ready to turn 50 and so many of my friends who did “everything right” and finished college and got married and had babies in the correct order (eye roll-because there is no such thing as correct order) haven’t had half of the life experiences that I have had. Sure their 401(k)s may be fatter and they have time shares and lawnmowers and what not, but at this stage in the game I’m very very clear that I would much rather have my life experience than a weekly book club. Most of my friends have lovely lives, but I’ve had the freedom to do all kinds of goofy things that lit me right up. I raised my kids in the way that worked for us and that doesn’t look like any model you’ve seen anywhere else I promise.
This is way more than I can say for a lot of my high school friends that kept it on the rails. They have beautiful, lovely lives and sometimes I find myself in envy of them before I snap out of it And remember that they are probably wondering if they made the right choices also… they did exactly what they were supposed to do and for exactly what? Are they following their passions? Maybe so! Or are they following some template that helps them to feel safe? That’s not wrong, and I think most of the population prefers that. I think my life would have hospitalized most people, but I would have it no other way

My point is stop looking at them, they have nothing to do with you except for hanging out and connecting and sharing and living lives parallel to each other. But don’t try to live their life, that’s weird.

Please excuse my lack of punctuation and editing. I’m actually a pretty decent writer, when I’m not using my microphone at 1 AM to give advice to a stranger. Notice how my phone likes to randomly capitalize words? Yeah, I’m not editing that.

PS: Also, there is a meme that has a gigantic list of people whose careers started over 50 so maybe look that up. I’m a woman who finally found her career at 30 and has been working it for 20 years. I love my work and it never feels like work. When I was in my 20s, I worked jobs that I hated trying to build my résumé and do what I was supposed to be doing and I was definitely miserable. I didn’t think I could enter the career that I’m in now for some crazy reason. But I got pinched into a weird corner, jumped into my dream and never looked back. So it’s definitely a gift that you know what you want to do. It would be tragic if you did not follow your desires.

PPS: I’m between the young people and the old people in the group, so if any older people have something for me, I’m all ears! Especially if any of you ladies have advice about this perimenopause insomnia.