Grab your hard hat

Get comfortable with a life that's going to be under construction for a while

The good old days when my brother used to play pretend before he needed money. He turned the spot my dad was excavating for our above-ground pool into a mini-construction site. Playing grown-up for a day is much more fun than permanently taking on the role. But one of the best things you can do in your 20s is get comfortable with a life that’s going to be in a construction zone for a while.

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It’s not unusual for people in their 20s to wonder when life will finally start to settle down. If you had hoped that a milestone event like graduation or a certain number of candles on your birthday cake would mean you’d finally crossed the finish line into a mostly comfortable adulthood, you were sadly mistaken.  

The reality is that your life is more likely to resemble a construction zone for most of your 20s. Construction zones are often messy, noisy, and sometimes frustrating. They sometimes feature unexpected delays and require things to be ripped out and done all over again. Getting through them sometimes requires you to come up with novel ways to navigate around obstacles. 

I looked for photos of construction projects I’d lived through to illustrate this week’s piece. Seeing those images reminded me that many of the worthwhile, larger projects we tackle in life require a period of messiness and uncertainty for a time. When we demolished part of our house in to reconfigure some of our living space, I started referring to it as “Project Omelet” to remind myself of the old saying that if you want to make an omelet, you need to crack a few eggs.

Though we stood to gain a larger bathroom, a guest room, and a sleeping porch, along with some general improvements that would make living in our house more pleasant, this construction project involved a lot of planning, decisions, and months of slow but steady progress. Plus, with our old bedroom demolished, my husband and I had to sleep on the pullout sofa in our family room for two months. I took to calling it “Project Omelet” to remind myself of the bigger picture–to make something better suited to our taste, we needed to crack open a few things.

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So if you feel a little unsettled right now, take heart. Most things–including your life–aren’t built in a day. Your life 10 or 15 years from now will likely resemble more of what you had in mind for your grown-up life. But right now you are in building mode. 

Think about all of the aspects of your life under construction:

Career. You may still be in the process of discovering what your professional life’s work will be. And even if you’ve already figured out what you want to be when you grow up, you’re in the beginning stages of assembling a career.

Love, Marriage, and Relationships. If you’ve always pictured yourself happily married, there’s the tricky business of finding a partner who’s a good fit for the long haul. And once you find your soulmate, you must navigate through all that’s required to build a solid foundation for a long-term relationship. Plus, you need to invest time and energy in the family relationships and friendships you want to maintain.

Finding Your Purpose in Life. There must be a reason why you’re here on planet Earth at this particular time in history. Even if you believe that God has a plan for you, discovering what that plan is takes some work, especially since sometimes it seems like God keeps that plan top secret and locked in a heavenly file cabinet somewhere. And even if you don’t believe God has a plan, you likely sense that having the trials and tribulations of life serve some purpose will make your life more meaningful. Sorting all that out is usually a long-term project.

Systems for Tactical, Practical Stuff. Now that you’re entirely responsible for your own care and feeding, there’s a lot of pesky, get-your-shit-together stuff to figure out. How much money should you be saving for the future? What choices should you make when you enroll for health care and other benefits? How do you get a loan and pay it off responsibly? Do you really need life insurance at your age? And I could go on…

Longer Term Goals. Besides navigating daily life, you also have to keep an eye on those major goals you have for your life. For instance, if you’ve always wanted children, when and how will parenthood fit in? If you want to go to grad school or start something entrepreneurial, how and when you make that happen? Sorting these things out takes some time and effort.

Our kitchen renovation project in progress. After the remodeling company ripped out the old cabinets and appliances, my husband and our dads got to work installing a new floor. As with any construction project, ours involved some messy in-between scenes as we made progress toward a new and improved kitchen. 

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It’s almost too much to take in at one time. But the good news is that you don’t have to. To borrow a metaphor from E.L. Doctorow, it’s like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. 

As you get more living under your belt, you will benefit from a learning curve. Aspects of your life will gradually settle into place. Your vision for your future will become clearer. 

You will discover that much of life requires just doing the next right thing and then making additional decisions as everything unfolds. 

I can’t tell you for sure when your life will settle down, but I promise I will be here every week, sharing something to hopefully help you make sense of your big adult life–the Big Picture stuff, the Little Life Lessons, the Career stuff, the Love and Relationship subjects likely on your mind, and some of the Get Your Shit Together stuff that you’re trying to get up-to-speed about.

And I will constantly be on the lookout for “books of wisdom” that address topics on the minds of people trying to get their lives together. I’ll feature those as Books of the Month.

Not many people enjoy living in a construction zone, but hang in there–it will all be worth it if you’re patient and intentional about building a meaningful life.

After a lightning strike sparked a raging blaze that destroyed the upper level of our barn, we hired an Amish firm to rebuild it. Reconstructing a 50-foot by 50-foot barn in genuine post-and-beam style was a massive project. That’s my husband by the ladder consulting with the workers as they framed it out. It reminds me how, with any construction, you have to start somewhere and build a firm foundation.

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