On Turning 20

On October 12, 1993, a child was born in the city of Palmerston North, New Zealand. Some 20 years later, that same child sits at a computer keyboard, updating his blog and reflecting upon two decades of life on this crazy planet.

It's hard not to get emotional thinking that my teen years are over and realising that the next 10 years of my life are going to pretty much be whatever I choose to make of them. I'd be lying if I said that there weren't times in my life where I questioned whether I'd even make it this far but here I am, 20 years old, where I want to be, pursuing what I love.

I don't feel much different in any particular respect having hit the end of my 2nd decade of life. Nothing much has changed yet; I still eat breakfast far less often than I probably should, I still put my pants on one leg at a time and I still have a lot of things I'm trying to figure out.

I guess the biggest difference is my outlook on things to come. Everyone has a hard time growing up. It's awkward learning things by trial and error, there are some things we have to experience multiple times to get the lesson out of it and it sucks having to deal with that while going through dramatic physical and emotional developmental changes.

As a no-longer-teen-ager I feel like I am better equipped to deal with the lessons life throws at me. I don't have as much of the blind teen angst any more. I don't have the stress of learning to juggle sports, school and band schedules. I've been through enough interpersonal relationships to have a fair idea of how to treat someone, how I should be treated and what to do when things aren't right.That said, I make no claim to having everything figured out. I just think that I have a much better set of coping strategies for when things do go to shit than I had at 13 or 15 or even 18.

I'm hopeful that my 20s will be my best decade yet and that when I write my "On Turning 30" post in ten years I'll have a much bigger readership and a long list of accomplishments to reflect on. Who knows, by then maybe my children will be reading this, wondering what their crazy father is on about because they'll be too young to have any kind of perspective on any of this stuff yet. I'd be okay with that.

For now, I'm young enough to have my whole life ahead of me and old enough to do something about it. Here's to living outside the comfort zone, taking giant leaps of faith and looking back with a smile. I'm proud of who I am, I'm proud of how I got to being who I am and I wouldn't trade the last 20 years of my life for anything. May the crazy ride continue.

Photo by Will Myers on Unsplash