What My 20's Have Taught Me....so far.....

I discovered these posts over on Fairy Tales Are True about what my 20's have taught me.  So I decided to do one of my own.

I just turned 25, so I'm nowhere near the end of my 20's, just over halfway to be precise.  But I have learned a few things in the past few years.  Time sure flies when you get old.

Put your time into relationships that matter.  Somewhere along the way, I decided to stop caring about what other people think (not totally, just a little) and put my time into the relationships that I cared about preserving.  When you are young, you can have 50 friends.  When you get older, you get busy, you have grown up things you need to do.  It's harder to spend time with all those friends. So eventually I decided that there were certain people I just didn't care to be good friends with.  I wasn't going to stress about spending time with them.  I wanted to spend time with the people that I want to be friends with 20 years from now. 

Some friends, my sister and I on my 20th birthday.  Seems so long ago.

Clean your bathroom frequently.  If you clean it often, it doesn't get as dirty and gross.  Thus making it easier to clean.  Enough said.

He's just not that into you.  Yes I read the book, watched the movie.  It's hard to follow this rule.  I was single for the first 2 years of my twenties.  (It seemed like forever at the time.)  A lot of guys weren't that into me.  Ryan was, and when he is into you, it makes all the difference in the world.

Life is never easy but it's everchanging.  I don't want to wish away my life.  This is something I have learned, but haven't yet mastered.  Whenever you are at a certain stage that isn't particularly enjoyable, you say, in six months this will be over, I can't wait.  Well yes, in six months it will be over, but then there will be something else.  I want to enjoy my life today, enjoy the struggles, and be proud of myself when I work through them. 

Roommates suck.  This is a deep one, hold on.  I lived with I think 13 different people throughout university.  I am glad that stage is over, but I can say that I learned so much from living with each and every one of them.

There is a happy medium between being cheap and spending everything you got (and everything your student loans will give you).  A lot of people will say to spend while you are young, don't worry about the debt.  Travel and enjoy yourself.  I took the opposite approach and it worked out for me.  I did a co-op in university, I was careful with my money, I bought a house, rented it out and then sold it.  And I came out of university with no debt and more money in the bank then when I went to school in the first place.  And that money just paid for our renovations.  So while it might not be the route everyone wants to go, it worked for me, and I don't regret it. 

And after going through all of the pictures of my 20's there are no more that go well with these things that I have learned.

I have five years to go, and I'm sure I will learn a lot more in those years.  About my marriage, friendships, hopefully motherhood (5 years people, I have 5 years, don't think I will be pregnant this year).  And I look forward to it all.