I want my 4-inch stilettos and New York pavement

I remember being 13, watching movies about dope ass 20-something-year-old women having it mostly together, what with their fancy degrees and working at their swanky law firms/ad agencies/fashion magazines and/or finding love and marrying in a whirlwind of brilliant flowers and whatnot. I loved watching them and fantasizing about where I would be, which fancy city street I would be strutting down in my 4-inch stilettos. (Nod at the Devil Wears Prada)

We’ve all heard it growing up —> go to school so you can good grades, get good grades so you can get into college, go to college so you can get a degree, get a degree so you can get a good job, get a job so you can… ????

(and of course, if you’re in my family, don’t get pregnant at any point along the way)

You don’t actually realize then that there’s a whole bunch of time that needs to be filled between the “get a good job” point and the point when time’s up. I guess I figured that by the time I got to this point I would have figured the rest of it out; I would know what to say when people ask what my Longterm Plan is. Yet, things are different from what I imagined. I feel like I’m at that point where I’ve checked pretty much all the boxes that I drew up for myself at 13. But now, at 24, I’ve hit a wall… well, less of a wall and more of an intersection. A strange, multiverse type intersection with 15 different one-way streets staring me in my face. 

Where is the game plan for 20-somethings? And I don’t mean some motivational book from a C-list celebrity or a far-too-long Instagram post which ends in 3 different discount codes. We’re all stuck in that no man’s land where we are never quite sure what or even where the next step is. And I feel like I’m too broke to spend too much time trying to figure it out. Plus, on that aforementioned brokeness, you have to contend with the fact that some of those roads don’t seem to even be open. 

Every older person has a different idea of what you should be doing, TRAVEL (you’re young), GET MARRIED (you’re getting old) and if you’re in my family God and Church is the answer. I don’t have any advice, because I’m still over here contemplating what to do with my own life. But I guess life is just a series of stages where you pretend to have it figured out until you probably, kinda, maybe, sorta do?

I guess I’ll stick with my black flats and nonexistent Kingston sidewalk for now.