The Uncomfortable Reality of Turning 28.
Everyone talks about the perils of turning 30.
That age where you’re no longer “young” anymore, your 20s (the “best” years of your life) are behind you, and now you have to adult.
28 is also one of those weird years.
An age where you’re on the cusp of turning 30 - it’s not quite here yet, but it’s on the way, and you can feel it.
A few months ago, I turned 28.
And like most years, I didn’t really feel much - another year, another number, right?
But as I started thinking about it, the more interested I became in what I feel like is a unique time of my life.
Today I’m going to share with you what it feels like to be 28 - at least how I feel.
We’re taking a small break from the usual photography content in this one, and diving into some life stuff.
I hope you find this interesting or useful.
You’re not as successful as you imagined.
I think a lot of people imagine their 20s to be this wild adventure.
One where they’re traveling the world, meeting all these new people, doing all these things - and at the same time, building a career and a family.
And then you live through it and you realize:
You’re not nearly as successful as you thought you’d be.
Building a career, a family, a life - all that stuff takes a lot of time.
And even if you were super successful, there are all these other problems you’ll still have.
If you went to med school, you’re probably just getting out or in residency and still have hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt.
If you were a superstar athlete and went pro, unless you’re Lebron, many NBA and NFL players retire around 27-30 - so you’re facing retirement.
Most of us are not nearly that successful - and that’s okay.
Because no matter how successful you were in your 20s, it still wouldn’t be enough.
You still wouldn’t be as successful as you imagined, because there’s always another level.
Despite graduating med school, the doctor still thinks about the doctors making more money than him/her, or working less hours.
Despite going pro, the athlete still thinks about the athletes with better careers.
And at 28, you begin to settle into the reality that most of us are just average.
And that’s okay.
Because: success isn’t all that it’s cracked out to be.
It’s not going to grant you that everlasting happiness or peace that you thought it might in your younger years.
And even if you did accomplish all your dreams and goals, you still might hate your life.
Many successful people do.
You start seeing friends less.
The unfortunate part about getting older is that we drift away from the people we once spent so much time around.
Even me, I remember what it meant to go to a different school than your friend.
You’d transition from middle school to high school, or high school to college, and things change.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but a little change in environment meant: you might never see them again, if ever.
And even if you do put in the effort, it’s becomes like once a year, not every day.
As time passes, this only gets harder.
You and your friends pick up more responsibilities, move to different cities, or even get married.
And you just don’t see them anymore.
Even if your friends are close by, everyone is so busy building their lives that opportunities to meet up are rare.
You sort of have to put in extra extra effort to make it happen and both be on the same page, or it wont happen.
A couple of years ago I attended a friend’s wedding and had a funny thought.
I thought to myself:
This isn’t just a wedding, it’s a goodbye ceremony.
Because it’s probably the last time I’ll ever see this person again, if not for a very very long time.
This moment ends the life they had previously and begins a new one.
Obviously it’s not that dramatic, but I can’t help but see that way.
It’s just a part of life I guess…
You’ve finally started taking care of yourself (maybe).
When you’re younger, your health is insane.
So people are always telling you how great youth is, to enjoy it while it lasts, and of course, to start taking care of yourself before it’s too late.
Which you kind of brush off while you’re young, because - that’s the gift of being young.
Then you reach your late 20s and start getting skin problems you’ve never had before, cavities you’ve never had before, and your knees and back start aching.
It’s there the reality of age starts setting in.
And of course the old heads will say, “If you think it’s bad now, just wait till your 40.”
So it’s around this point you finally decided to start taking care of yourself (maybe).
This means diet and exercise.
For me, I’ve always enjoyed physical activity so I’ve never slacked off on that.
But diet - that was the heavy hitter for me.
I used to eat any and everything that I wanted to because my body handled it fine.
Chili cheese fries, potato chips, sugary drinks, you name it.
It wasn’t until around 26-27 that I realized: my body wasn’t handling it, it was just accumulating it.
It was like a rope building up tension over the years until one day it would break.
And if I didn’t want it to break, I had to loosen the tension now.
So I started eating healthier - which really started with eating less unhealthy.
Cutting out or lowering sweets, fatty foods, processed foods, alcohol, drugs, etc.
And adding more vegetables, fruits, and all that stuff.
Now I’m no nutrition expert - you can do your own research.
But the point is, I figured these habits are more easily changed when I’m 28, rather than 38.
And if I’m gonna have to do it anyways, it’d be way easier to do now.
And so far, it really has made a difference.
Once you get past the initial adjustment and cravings, you’ll find yourself being way more productive, focused, and clear minded.
And I can make better photography and YouTube content because of it.
The irony being, if you feel “old”, start taking care of yourself - it’ll help you feel “younger”.
You don’t quite have things figured out.
In your late 20s, you still feel like a kid - but you’re definitely not anymore.
You can still remember college and even high school like it was just yesterday, only it wasn’t, it was like 10 years ago.
And that’s weird.
By this age, you may have the momentum of: finally getting down your focus, motivation, and productivity to learn all these new things.
The only problem is: society expects you have that all figured out by this age.
But in reality, most of your younger years were spent having fun and messing around.
So it’s a mixture of finally making progress and getting moving, while at the same time expected to have it fully figured out.
Because you’re 28 now, not 23.
The great irony is: no one ever has it fully figured out.
Not even your parents and grandparents when they were 28.
Yet they seem to only remember how much they had their sh*t together, while you don’t have yours.
So maybe you don’t have things figured out right now.
And maybe you’ll find comfort in knowing that you’ll never have things figured out.
There’s no one age we can pin down and say, “this is when you’re supposed to have it all figured out”, because it doesn’t exist.
The famous writer Charles Bukowski didn’t publish his first successful novel, Post Office, until he was 49.
Bram Stoker, the man who wrote Dracula, didn’t get it published until he was 50.
So aim to make progress, keep taking steps forward, and ignore the people around you who say you should be further on than you are.
Because there is no holy ground where everything is great, even if you reach “success”.
And you are exactly where you should be right now.
You’re less willing to experiment.
It’s funny - as we get older we become more and more like the “boring adults” we once ran away from as kids.
By this time you’ve tried many different things, and know what you like and don’t like.
You know if you like clubs and bars or if you just wanna stay home and read a book or watch a show.
Maybe you’ve traveled around a bit and either want to see more of the world or just want to stay home.
It’s not like your early 20s when you were down to try all these new and different things.
Because you’ve done a lot of them already - and sort of get the gist of it.
The spark we once had when everything was new isn’t quite there anymore.
The upside is that you can make room for the stuff you actually like, and cut out all the things you don’t like.
Which will make your overall experience of life better in a sense.
More good stuff, less bad stuff.
The unfortunate downside is that you lose that bit of novelty.
Being willing to experiment and try new things is what keeps life interesting.
And if you’re not down to try something new, things could get boring.
So part of youth is keeping your mind open to new experiences, even at the expense of getting burned.
I find myself struggling with this all the time.
I more or less have an “ideal day” already.
I figured out what I like to do and what I don’t like to do.
And I’m kind of okay doing the same stuff I like every day.
Things like writing, reading, taking photos, exercising, etc.
And now it requires a conscious effort to mix it up every now and then.
Knowing that I might prefer to do something else, but I should still step outside of my own box, on the off chance that it actually turns out awesome.
This could be: going out more, saying yes to different things I wouldn’t normally say yes to, and not caring so much if it ends as a bad night.
If you’re in your early 20s this might sound a bit weird, since you’re still in that stage where you say “yes” before asking, “where are we going?”
And it means you’re going to have to keep experimenting as you get older if you want to keep things novel and fun.
Or just hunker down and enjoy the things you’ve found worthwhile of your time.
Your parents are getting old.
My parents have always been a bit older than the parents of other kids around me.
So I knew they’d be even older when I got older, but it’s becoming realer and realer now.
I can see it in their face, their posture, the way they walk.
And looking back at old photos of how young they used to be unsettles me.
It’s an unfortunate reality that you can’t be young while your parents are young.
And by the time you’re in your 20s, you want to spend time with other people and friends, because you’ve already just spent the previous two decades with them.
So lately, I’ve been trying to spend time, talk, improve our relationship, all the while wanting to branch out, be more independent, and live my own life.
Recently I went on a trip with them back to Cambodia, our homeland.
I’d never been and was a bit tired of traveling, having just came back from a month in Japan.
But I made the effort to go because I knew it would be an experience I’d be glad I had in my later years.
And this could be my last opportunity to do so.
I’ll be sharing with you guys my experience, and of course the photos, in other articles, so stay tuned for that.
But yeah, there’s no perfect answer for this one.
The people around you get old as time passes and wont be here forever.
Cherish their company while it’s here.
You’ve begun to be more at peace with yourself.
A wonderful part about getting older is you finally feel more at peace with yourself.
When you’re a young angsty teenager, you still don’t quite know where you fit in.
Or maybe you know, but you have yet to embrace it because you don’t want to or you want to be someone else.
But by the age of 28, you more or less know who you are.
You know who you are and who you aren’t.
You know what you like and what you don’t like.
You know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at.
And you’ve stopped trying to fight that or be someone you’re not.
You’ve settled into the shoes you were born with…and that feels pretty good.
You like that you’re not book smart because it means you’re more hands on.
You like that you’re not super athletic because it means you’re more of a thinker.
And you understand the relationship between what you have and don’t have.
Having something else could mean losing this part of yourself that you really really like.
And in many cases, that’s not worth it.
You also learn to stop comparing yourself to others so much.
Because based on the same analogy, trading lives, or having this quality someone else has, comes as a trade-off of it’s own.
There’s no good for bad swap, you’d have to trade lives with another person wholesale - and that sounds much less appealing to you.
Because you realize that although your life has many problems of its own, they’re your problems.
And you’d rather have your problems than someone else’s.
With those realizations comes a sense of peace.
Because there’s no longer trying to be someone you’re not.
And there’s no envy for what other people have because it comes at a cost.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs, right?
You’re too old to be young but too young to be old.
28 is a weird age.
You’re not quite as successful as you thought you’d be - in fact you’re remarkably average, and you’re kind of okay with that.
You and your friends are growing apart, everyone’s too busy to meet up, and people are getting married and having kids.
You start seeing your health deteriorate and if you’re good about it, have finally started taking care of yourself.
You kind of know who you are and what you want, but you’re not at the stage where your career and life is fully established.
You no longer want to do the same crazy and reckless stuff you did when you were younger and yet it feels too early to be settling down and doing mom/dad things.
You realize that success comes to many people later in life, and many successful people are miserable anyways.
Maybe you’ve got a few gray hairs now, but your parents have a ton, and you think you should start appreciating them more.
Everyone telling you to enjoy your life while you’re young, but they also tell you that now’s a good time to get your shit together.
And even if you want to chill out and relax, you don’t have the pension, retirement fund, and security that comes with old age.
And of course, you can feel 30 coming, knocking on your door, ready to say hello.
If I could describe it best I’d say 28 is an age where:
You’re too old to be young but too young to be old.
And maybe it’ll feel like this when I’m 30 - only much more real.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this.
We talk mainly photography here so if you’re into that check out the rest of my articles.
You can also learn more in Photography Essentials - that’s my free course.
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See you next time.
