The 29 Worst Things About Being In Your 20s

1. Realizing that, post 21, there is not a whole lot in the way of “awesome milestone birthday” that you really look forward to, and that birthdays just get progressively more depressing.

2. The awkward transition from college which convinced you that you were going to get an awesome job in an economy which has just about none of those, and is filled with people who basically mock you for not being able to get your shit together.

3. Having to pay back debt.

4. Realizing that you’re not able to drink and/or party in the same way you once were, and that debilitating hangovers are becoming more and more of a reason to avoid a lot of the social outings you’re invited to.

5. Understanding how much of everything seems to center around drinking, and how many of your friends seem to be going from “cool party person” to borderline alcoholic.

6. Having to rent your own apartment and going through the circus of paperwork and rejection and false leads which that entails.

7. Having to deal with terrible roommates or people you sublet from because you weren’t financially stable enough to get your own lease.

8. Suddenly fielding all kinds of inappropriate questions about where your relationship is “going” and if it is really “serious,” where just a few short years ago you were able to date whomever you wanted for whatever reason your heart desired.

9. Gaining weight when you eat all the junk food you are now old enough to buy on your own.

10. Having to maintain a somewhat classy presence on social media and not being unconcerned with whether or not people can see a bong in the background of your profile picture because you now have a job and image to maintain.

11. Slowly growing to hate almost everyone on your Facebook because they’re all becoming boring and judgmental, and you secretly know that you are also becoming these things.

12. Not understanding cool internet things occasionally, and feeling too old for some of the more fleeting trends.

13. Sleeping with people who are very much still in the process of maturing sexually and aren’t exactly the most generous partners in bed.

14. Being poor.

15. Being surrounded by ads and friends and salespeople and trendy bloggers who are essentially pushing you to buy all of the cool shit you know you absolutely cannot afford, because you seem to be in the target demographic for everything.

16. Going through constant cycles of love and hatred with the internet.

17. Being incredibly dependent on the internet for everything, and simultaneously understanding how much your time spent on it is ruining your ability to enjoy life outside your apartment.

18. The realization that you are seen as a lame person if you just happen to be more introverted and want to stay in on a lot of the days where people are going out and doing quote-unquote fun shit.

19. The struggle that is online dating.

20. Not feeling like you understand your place in things, or what generation you actually belong to. Being unsure of whether or not to consider yourself an adult.

21. Feeling cheated out of what you had always imagined adulthood would look like, and resentful towards a generation of hardcore debters that left us a relatively bleak financial and professional landscape.

22. Not understanding how some people can seem so insanely successful in the face of so many of your peers struggling to maintain basic life skills.

23. Humblebragging.

24. Feeling forced to care about pop culture that you don’t actually care about because everyone else on the internet seems to insist that you care about it.

25. Wanting to travel, and not having the money to do it.

26. Getting bitterly jealous at people who seem to be living it up in their youth more than you are, and enjoying all of the things you are missing out on because you work too much for too little money.

27. Apartment envy.

28. Unpaid internships.

29. Not being sure what the future holds for you, and feeling embarrassed for being so unsure because you feel like you should have “gotten it together” by now, as you are at an age which you’d always pictured in your mind as being “adult.” Still feeling like a little kid planning on what they want to be when they grow up.