I've been really blessed to have really close relationships with five different girls who all have really close relationships with each other. It's kind of like any movie about any sisterhood you've ever rolled your eyes at, but it's like, real life. I genuinely love each of them for who they are and would lay my life down for anyone of them, but it's only compounded by the fact that each of us feel that way about all of the others. But anyway, enough of that mushy stuff.

The reason I started writing this is to say how much I love having a front row seat to watching their lives unfold. Lately, I've been so annoyed with all the forlorn under-employed, post-grad 20-somethings bitching through social media about being forlorn under-employed, post-grad 20 somethings, because guess what, you just have to figure it out! No one has answers for you that you haven't heard already, and you're just going to have to take what you know and work it out yourself. Yes, that whiny chorus of your peers is cuttingly accurate and being a grownup mostly blows, but how you respond to all of this is what makes you, you.

Out of my five friends, one went to school for accounting, and after working an accounting job for over a year, just decided she hates it. One fell in love with a girl in a band and moved to Arizona only to realize that with the tour schedule, her girlfriend doesn't really spend much time in Arizona. So she's been flying all over creation to make things work and trying hard to find a job and carve out her own space. One went to Spain to be an au pair and when that didn't work out, she got a temp job in Texas and now she's moving back to Omaha to find Lord knows what awaits her. One just broke up with a boy for whom she'd stayed in Manhattan, KS (aka BFE), and now she's on to Chicago for bigger and better (and scarier) things. One moved from Boston to LA and worked her ass off at Starbucks while looking for a "real" job, and then found one that she hates and now works her ass off at both.

While all of these wonderful women in their own ways could typify the under-employed, post-grad 20-somethings, they're all figuring it out!* And it's shitty, and it's hard because we're real people now and not just students and we have to figure out insurance and pay bills and register our vehicles, but sometimes I think people feel so lost in that sea of responsibility that they don't realize they're swimming! By God, your head is above water! Even if just barely, even if waves still catch you off guard sometimes and your legs are tired, you are kicking and you are winning more than you're losing, and you're learning how to do this and you're becoming who you want to be! I have known these girls collectively since high school and some of them since elementary school and never in all of those years have I so clearly watched their best choices and their sheer will to figure shit out define them. These are growing pains. I believe the struggles will only change, but they will always be there. And maybe that's why I have so little patience for people complaining about this stage in life, because those people who just sit there and do that will always be able to find things to complain about. But I am in love with these girls whose will to grapple back with the challenges of being a person so gracefully suits them. I am inspired by them and I am blessed to have them in my corner and to be in theirs and I can't wait to see who these struggles make us.



*I too, am figuring it out. I am salaried with benefits and have no reason to complain about my job, but with married life and another move on the horizon, I feel equally lost-at-sea.