When I tell people Autumn is my favourite season , I don’t think they understand exactly what I mean.

It isn’t just the turning of the leaves and the new chill in the air. It’s the feeling of renewal. Rescuing my coats from the basement, digging out scarves from the back of my wardrobe.

As I say goodbye to the heat and sweat of summer, I welcome the changing seasons like one would welcome a hug from a relative.

Like I am taking my first full breath in seven months. The external pressure I put on myself lightens during the Autumn season.

With every leaf that falls, so do the burdens I put on myself.

Even the sunlight feels more golden. Like my skin is absorbing every single particle.

My skin welcomes the familiar feeling of soft sweaters and fluffy socks. Overjoyed with the notion that I am not sweating for the first time in three months.

Summer brings uneven routines and busy holidays. But Autumn brings me stability, structure and predictability.

Rainy days, when I can stay inside all day and not feel ashamed or lazy. Each raindrop washing away each expectation I put on myself.

Layering my outfits, content with the fact that I can cover my whole body head to toe and still be a bit chilly.

Suddenly, a coffee outside or a walk to the shop is a brand new experience, as if I am seeing the world for the first time. Autumn wakes up all my senses at once.

Then I welcome Halloween with a childlike glee. Not like Christmas, I enjoy this ‘holiday’ completely by myself.

With a checklist of movies to get through and goodies to bake. I squeal at the excitement I get from the idea of doing activities I only do once a year.

The only time in the year I can listen to Cigarettes After Sex without feeling depressed. For some reason, the crisp air and seasonally spiced drinks bring lightness to things that usually feel heavy.

For a moment, being 25 doesn’t feel suffocating. Autumn reminds me that change is constant and nothing stays the same for long.

As I write this, knowing I won’t be enjoying the falling leaves or enriching colours of Autumn this year, a part of me feels anxious.

Without the crisp air, when will I get to breathe? Without the reminder that everything that dies eventually grows again, how will I feel hope?

How will I fully unburden the pressure I put on myself without the transition into a new season? Because that is why Autumn is my favourite; I transition with nature. Without nature transitioning in front of me - how will I do it?

I know that I do not need the falling leaves or crisp breeze to breathe, to grow, to transition. But they sure do help.

If you are reading this, and do live in an area where Autumn will blossom in the next three months. I beg of you to enrich yourself in it; go for that walk, awaken yourself to all the senses around you. Welcome the transition into a new season like you would welcome a hug from a relative.

I’ve been waiting for my life to start for as long as I can remember.

Waiting for that thing to swoop me off my feet, shake my shoulders and tell me THIS IS IT, YOUR LIFE STARTS NOW! Like I am in the waiting room of my own life.

I am 25 and I feel like I am still in that same waiting room.

But my life has, in fact, started. (crazy right?)

It officially started 8,914 days ago.

So why has it taken so long to realize this, you might ask? Did I survive a traumatic experience or get hit in the head and have the epiphany of “ Oh, I am ALIVE?”

Well, no, not really.

Simply put: I’m fed up wasting my life living in the past, waiting for one thing to be resolved to finally start living.

At 20, I was waiting to go to NYC for my semester abroad - then I would start living.

Then I was 23, waiting to quit my job at TK-Maxx - then I would start living.

At 25, I am now working a corporate job living in a city, and I am still waiting for my life to start. As if all those past versions of myself were tests and I am waiting for the real thing.

You might think that I am constantly thinking about the future, planning my next step. But it’s actually the opposite. I am constantly wishing for a past version of my life.

The simple life I had at 23, stocking shelves and living at home, where my life’s biggest question was what should I eat today?

The life I had at 21, living in NYC living down the hall from my best friends.

But I don’t think I ever truly appreciated those lives as they were happening?

I say that nostalgia is a bitch, because she shows me an oversimplification of the past.

Nostalgia shows me my life at 23: with an abundance of time to do what I liked, with no deadlines, no emails to send, and no Team calls to join - but she doesn’t remind me how lonely I was, and how unmotivated I felt.

She shows me my life at 21: the thrilling and exciting hustle and bustle of New York City, and seeing my best friends every day - but she doesn’t remind me of how homesick I was and that I would comfort eat every night.

So, to me, yeah, nostalgia can be a bitch, because she romanticizes my past lives over and over again until I’m tweaking out in my bed on a Sunday night trying to plan a whole 360 of my life just so I can feel something.

Look, it’s not the most perfect way of thinking, but it made me realize that one day, I will be looking at this messy, uncertain chapter of my life, and be wishing I was back here.

So as shitty as this chapter might seem to me right now, maybe it isn’t so bad? Just because I love the past doesn’t mean I have to hate the present. And if I continue clinging to the comforts of the past, how will I ever adapt to the present or embrace the future?

Nostalgia may be a bitch, but maybe she is a smart one? She constantly shows me all the things that brought my joy and happiness, and through understanding that I can continue to incorporate those things into my life - every day.

The past is gone, it is unchangeable, it cannot be recreated. Just like my life right now, cannot be replicated in ten years time.

So I am going to commit to the things that bring me joy, and brought me joy in the past. Maybe it’s early morning wake ups to go for a hike, hour long phone calls with a long distance friend, or cooking an old meal I used to fixate on during a specific period of my life, and maybe I will discover brand new things that bring me joy!

But what I need to remind myself is that my life has STARTED. Just because I am not living my ‘dream life’ does not undervalue my current existence. We cannot wait for life to suddenly become our ‘dream’. Because what if it never happens?

Maybe the dream isn’t to live in a certain city, or with certain people doing a specific job - but to just be alive, and feel that everyday.

This article is not to tell you I have everything figured out, that I’ve done it, I am super present all the time! I still yearn for certain things from the past, I can get sad because a part of me knows I might never experience those things again. But instead of trying to replicate those moments or routines in my current life, I think about all the new things I am yet to experience, that I will one day yearn for.

Is the career ladder dying?

As someone at the cusp of the so-called ‘career ladder’ and joining the corporate world, I have been starting to reconsider my path in life. Or, actually, reconsidering what path I want to go down.

In a generation where corporate 9-to-5 jobs are looked down upon, and entrepreneurship is worshipped, I think it’s become extremely difficult to distinguish what we want for our lives and what we should do based on what everyone else is doing.

Should I start my own business?

Should I move to Bali?

Should I be a Freelancer and be my own boss?

Should I, Should I, Should I…..

When I find myself scrolling through all the possible lives I could be living instead of my own, I find myself thinking about the ‘Jam Study’ by Sheena Lyengar and Mark Lepper. This research demonstrated that offering people too many options leads to a choice overload and decision paralysis, causing them to walk away and buy nothing.

Can this same theory be applied to our lives? Does the world offer us so many options that we can’t decide on one, so just stay put? Does the fact that I see millions of different lives online everyday stop me from truly living my own?

Seeing all these different possibilities unfold infront of me attracts my curoisity initially, I might even spend an afternoon looking for jobs in Australia or spend hours creating a marketing plan on Claude on how to launch my own business. But soon, this constant influx of information and possibilities overwhelms me and drains my mental energy, stopping me from taking any action.

So, no wonder I find it so difficult to choose a path and be content with it. Every time I choose one, whether its a new job or a new workout class, I am introduced to ten other things I could be doing instead, leaving me completely dissatisfied with my initial decision.

Maybe the battle isn’t choosing the right path? Maybe the battle is being able to choose a path for yourself, and ignore the path of others. To believe in your decisions but also allow yourself to change your mind - not because someone showed you a better path, but because your allowed to stray.

I think the Career Ladder is deteriorating, not because our generation doesn’t want to climb it, but because there’s thousands of ladders in-front of them and we can’t decide which one to get on - so we take the elevator instead.

“ Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps to hard”

Berry Schwarts ‘The Paradox of Choice

Smack bang in the middle of my twenties, and there are days where I envy my 12 year old self. The girl who could phone her Mum to pick her up, where she would come to the rescue and sweep away my troubles. Now, as a 25-year-old with a 9-6 job, I have realised that, to my dismay, I have to pick myself up now.

With every year of my twenties that passes, I find myself looking around wanting to ask people, ' what the f**k is this? and have you figured it out?’.

At first, I found solace in the millions of videos on social media of other people in their twenties, sharing their honest experiences, whether it was a bad date, a shit job, or a gut-wrenching heartbreak. But soon, the sheer volume of videos overwhelmed me. I realised I was trying to pursue the lives of millions of other girls. The girl that runs, the girl that knits, the girl that started her own business, the girl that travels. At the end of the day, I was the girl sat in bed, staring at all these other girls through a screen, fantasising about, possibly, maybe doing those things.

As I stood in the elevator, going up to my office one day. I stared at the little TV screen on the wall that displayed news, motivational quotes, and adverts. One quote came up that read ‘Comparison is the Thief of Joy ’-Theodore Roosevelt. I ruminated on this as the elevator slowly took me up to the 22nd floor. Do I truly need to be the girl that runs, the girl that knits, the girl that starts her own business, or the girl that travels? Are those things I actually want for myself, or personality traits being sold to me? I realised I didn’t know. I couldn’t identify the things in my life that I truly chose for myself, versus those other people chose for me. From small, almost insignificant things like my square-toed brown ballerina flats, my gold-rimmed glasses, my brown suede slouchy bag. To bigger things like my political opinions, my expectations of men, and the biggest, most impactful thing: my opinion of myself. I realised I only truly liked myself when I was replicating another person. Because if that girl is doing well in her life, if I wear the same outfit or buy the same lip gloss, then I will be too. But soon, as time goes on, I’m back staring at my screen in bed, at another girl, with another outfit and another lip gloss, thinking if I were like her maybe, then my life would be great.

So I guess the whole realisation of this personality-rotting, digital doomscrolling cycle that we are all inevitably in at some point is that I really do wish my Mum could come pick me up, and tell me everything will be fine and make me a cup of tea. But she lives 5,000 miles away, so I guess I’ll pick myself up.

~ Journal Entry of a 20 year old something