I am a total sucker for advice columns.
Every time I see one, I can’t help but look. Online, people pour their hearts out on all sorts of problems they’re having, or quandaries they’re in, but what leads me to read about these quandaries is not the problem itself, but the nature of the responses. The people who answer advice columns aren’t exactly “experts,” per se; they don’t (as far as I know) have advanced degrees in psychology or psychotherapy, haven’t worked with certain vulnerable populations, or anything that might deem them as experts, but that’s exactly why their advice is so refreshing to read. It’s because these people are human, with their own experiences and feelings, and they don’t have any professional obligation to conceal. It’s an epistolary relationship, like advice given from one friend to another in a letter form.
Some of my favorites are the Hey Lyle column by Lyle McKeany (this one is a favorite), and Subtle Maneuvers column by Mason Currey (like this one). Recently, I discovered a new favorite—one that made me jump for joy—the Ask Polly column.
Ask Polly is written by Heather Havrilesky, a writer who’s made a career out of giving advice. She writes with such zeal and honesty; in particular, this post titled, "Should I Just Give Up on My Writing?" from November 2021 really struck a chord with me. In it, a writer nearing 50 asks Heather what she should do about the juncture in her life - feeling like she’s too old (because she’s almost 50) and have not achieved as much as she wanted to achieve. And she’s wondering where things went wrong.
“I feel like I’m just walking in a circle,” she says. “Polly, I’m tired of walking. What’s my future? Writing pieces for MORE about how much it sucks to be an aging female writer?” Furthermore, she adds, “I’m in the “oh shit” years, when friends are getting cancers of all kinds, getting sick with mystery ailments, and in some cases, dying. So time feels very precious and this drive feels very urgent.”
I’m in the “oh shit” years, when friends are getting cancers of all kinds, getting sick with mystery ailments, and in some cases, dying. So time feels very precious and this drive feels very urgent.
This particular psychological self-beating is not good for anyone, yet we do it all the time. I know I do. I definitely did this when I was in my twenties. Chances are, I’ll live another 50+ years, but at that time, I was so lost, just like this woman who calls herself Somewhere Between Panic and Dread does.
Next week on Tuesday, I will turn 37. Yikes. I need to take a few steps back and reevaluate the repercussions of what I just did - by announcing my impending age, I’m revealing something about myself, something that involves time. Like Panic and Dread above, I feel all of these things sometimes. But I also feel that as I get older, I stop relying on birthdays as markers for achievements (as in, “I’m supposed to achieve XX by this age” trope), and instead focus on how time has changed me and my ways of thinking.
Ten years ago, at 27, I was looking around me, wondering how it was possible that five years had gone by since I stepped out into the world as a college graduate and still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, career-wise. I felt like time was passing me by, and what did I have to show for it? Nothing much, really. Except a college degree that I wasn’t using. It would be another six years before I read a book that would change my life.
It was 2018 when I stumbled upon When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink1. Now, almost four years later, the thing that stuck in my mind the most was the section on careers and salaries and how timing matters a lot when it comes to career growth.
But first, let me tell you about an all-too-familiar narrative, the “victim” story that I clung on to for many years until I discovered Pink’s book.
In 2008, my husband and I graduated into one of the worst economic recessions in American history. Up until that point, we were both fairly lucky. I had a scholarship in college that paid for the majority of my costs, and along with several grants I received, I didn’t graduate with as much debt as an average person would have. My husband attended a community college where tuition was pretty affordable, so much so that he could work his way through it. Which is what he did.
Little did we know, months after we graduated—and now newly married—we were thrust into an unexpected situation. I lost the job I had working for a medical benefits company and while my husband didn’t lose his job, the salary he got from it was barely above minimum wage. At the time, the state of Oregon’s minimum wage was $8.40 per hour. He made $9.00 per hour as a hotel front desk clerk. I remember him telling me once how there were more than 200 job applications for a front desk position at his hotel after being posted only for 48 hours.
Yes, you read that right. It was early 2009 and there were more than 200 applications for a $9.00 per hour job, a job that is notoriously difficult, undervalued and underpaid. But what else can people do? They needed a job.
It’s so unfair, we’d say to ourselves. Why are there no good jobs? Why are the jobs so low pay? Why is there so much competition? We wondered. Together, we bathed in the tub of our own bitterness.
Suddenly, the truth became crystal clear: having a college degree no longer guaranteed you anything, not even a decent salaried or an entry level job.
Several years later, when it seemed like things were starting to get better, the fact remains that everyone around us seemed to be doing better. No matter what we did, we simply could not keep up. And we wondered why.
This story is not uncommon, because there are statistics that back this up. In the book, Pink references a Yale study done by an economics professor named Lisa Kahn who found that people who graduated during an economic recession was less likely to move up in salaries as compared to their peers, who graduated a few years behind them or prior to them. What’s troublesome about this finding is that the damage can last up to 20 years if all other factors are equal. That means that no matter how hard the recession graduates try to climb, they will always be behind simply because of when they entered the job market.
Finally, it all made sense.
Finally, I could accept the fact that graduating during an economic recession just happened, that there was really nothing I could’ve done to prevent it.
In a way, it felt like closure, for if I hadn’t graduated during an economic recession, I wouldn’t have learned about grit or resilience. I wouldn’t have stayed on the bottom rung of the salary ladder but then again, I might have been burnt out, like many of my millennial peers. I might have had it easier, but most importantly, I would not have learned about rejection, and how to get back up again when life threw me in for unexpected loop.
As humans, we tend to ask, “Why me?” or “Why not me?” when we really should be asking, “Why now? How is now different than the past or the future? What makes this moment so unique that it has to happen right now to me?” It’s a different way of thinking about the same issue. The difference is that instead of allowing it to fester into a victim mentality, it brings us back to the present, when the “thing” that’s happening to us (or recently happened) has meaning. It’s there to teach us a lesson.
When good things happen to us, we laud it as a personal achievement based on our own hard work and nothing else. But when bad things happen to us, we often fall into the victim mentality, shifting the blame to external forces. We tell ourselves that we don’t deserve what happened. It’s unfair, we say. We ask ourselves, why is this happening to me? Why can’t I get that job that pays me well enough to live above poverty level? Why didn’t I get that promotion? Why can’t I figure out what to do with my life? Why, oh why?
These are the kind of questions that my husband and I asked ourselves for a long time. I realized now that it was simply a coping mechanism, a way to simplify what happened to us into a neat little narrative that others can relate to. Sure, we’re bounded by certain milestones, but everyone’s experiences are different. We all have the same bucket of time. Time is fleeting, and sometimes it’s unfair, but what matters is how we choose to view it and what we do with that perspective.
We cannot make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.
The beauty of life is the unexpected nature of it. But just because something doesn’t happen at the right time doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen. Things don’t happen when you want it to, but rather when it’s meant to happen.
After all, there is a right time and place for everything.
In case you missed it…
Question of the week:
When you think about time, what comes to mind? How does getting older make you feel? Reply or comment and let me know!
I love Dan Pink’s books so much. I’ve read all of them. He’s someone who writes fantastic nonfiction books about human psychology & social sciences mixed in with business-related topics. Highly recommended.
I've just turned 35 Hoang and I feel all the pressure. I guess it's understandable, though, and ok provided there's a part of us fighting back that sense of dread and failure. Adult life sucks. There's no day passing by without me wondering how can I change the course of my existence, to make it more true to myself. I tend to perceive time as a "before" and "after", which gives me anxiety because the now is rarely taken into consideration, and when it is it's in the form of a decision that's going to depend on the before and impact the after. The good thing is, as i turned 30 I discovered the sweet concept of "process" where time is fluid, evolving and ripe in possibilities and learning opportunities, rather than consequences. So, yeah, time for me is process now, I guess.
Thank you for asking this question, surely an important one.
So 37 right ? I will be 74 what a coincidence, does it make sense? NO. It doesn't have to make, when you get to 74 you learn that it doesn't have to make sense.
What comes to mind when thinking about time? "Let it be" by The Beatles, and Ouroboros the cycle of life, you are born to die according to the Stoics. Some say that we live only once, I think it is a mistake. We die once but we live every single day! So let's have the best day every day.
How do I feel about getting older? Great! I think that my best birthday was 50 when I stop worrying about getting older, but since then I have learn that you never stop learning.