“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” ~Satchel Paige
I have a question. Am I allowed to ask questions of you? If not then stop me because I have a tendency to go on and on and on and bore the shit out of people then they’re all “OH MY HELL, HB’s mouth actually doesn’t close.”
Moving on…
What were you like when you were 23? You can be anonymous or not. Just wondering for my own little project and because I’m nosy as fuck and well…it just popped into my mind.
65 Comments
23? oh gawd. i had just left my husband of almost 5 years. i was so unsure of myself, my life, my ability to survive on my own. i didn’t know what my positive qualities were and i sure as hell had little self-confidence.
but i realized what a bad relationship i had, that i deserved better than a verbally abusive, extremely jealous husband. so i moved to my dream city, got roommates, a job, and slowly found out who i was. and ten years later, i love my life even more than i did in my 20s.
i have more confidence in myself and my abilities and i know who i am.
but damn, at 23? i was going through some major life changes and i was scared as shit.
That was a whopping two years ago for me. I was just about to wrap up college and move to begin my first real-world job. I was also about to be introduced to the hell that is COMMUTING. Mostly I was (am?) unsure of what I wanted, needed, was capable of. I was scared a lot more than I wasn’t, and I didn’t do a lot of things in fear of what other people would think. Also, I didn’t take a vacation the whole year. Ugh.
Exactly 23, this time for me 9 years ago…oh, my God. It’s really personal. I’ll give you the basics here. I was engaged. My friend died on July 10th. I was caught between a new life and possibilities and tremendous grief. What was I like? I was so sad that summer, and so afraid to be happy even as it kept hitting me in the ass. I grew up, a lot, but probably not enough. Wow. It’s with me, all the time, but I rarely think about it. Email me if you want more – I might have to think about who I was then.
At 23, I was trying to crawl out of the hole I had created around 21. I had spent two years of being completely wild and out of control. I didn’t care if I lived to see another day. Actually I was still wild and out of control but I also tried to act a little more responsibly. I had just returned to college after almost a two year break. The new found responsible behavior was a result of my parents cutting me off after that break. That summer I worked two retail jobs for a total of 50-60 hours a week and attended summer school. And somehow I still had time to party. When I had to pay for it myself, I got some of my best grades — good enough to get accepted to law school. Of course, I am still dealing with the ramifications of decisions I made at 23.
at 23, i was working at a make-up counter, hawking product. probably on a “two-week” break from my boy-friend every month, in graduate school, while partying five nights a week.
and living with my mother.
yep, that pretty much sums up that crappy age.
Pregnant. Bitchy. Pregnant. Hungry. Pregnant. Tired. Pregnant.
At 23 I had been working for 2 whole years, living on my own for 1 year, totally broke and more and more in debt because I was making less than I needed to live (and by “live” I just mean eat sandwiches and sleep under a roof, not shop for new clothes 3 times a week) and buying food on my Visa.
At work I was struggling with a male-chauvinistic management, I was convinced I HAD to have a fantatic career to prove I was someone worthy, and stressing so much I was making myself sick. I thought I had to party a lot to be cool, and I don’t like partying that much, actually.
I just turned 30 (though I feel like 13 sometimes) and generally speaking, things are much better now. I do what I want, what you see is what you get, if you don’t like me, don’t stay around.
Wow. 23. That feels like a lifetime ago. I was working at the Chicago Tribune, nights, in sports then on the news desk. I had bought my first car (new and by myself) the year before) and I was about to move into my first apartment (a very cute studio down the street from Wrigley Field). I was still trying too hard to please people. Money was a joke. I wasn’t earning enough to live on. But I was getting along well with people at my job and slowly inching my way up the ladder … which I then jumped off a few years later.
I had interesting responses when I posted this quote as well
Two years ago at this time of year, I was newly married, pregnant and working at the same job I’m at now. I spent most of my days reading pregnancy blogs and going through a “nesting” phase. That period of my life was my first and last taste of true freedom as I had just moved out of my parents house the year before and two months later I would become a mom and never have a moment to myself again. I had lots of free time to shop and get pedicures and eat out with friends. I think around that time was when I got my first eyebrow waxing and when I started really wearing makeup. I guess 23 is when I really started to feel like an adult.
I could write a whole post on this this but I won’t. lol I was lost and trying to find myself. Having to be a “real” grown up but not wanting to be. Trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with this thing called “life”. Felt like I didn’t really have a niche – I wasn’t a stupid but didn’t feel like I had a “real” job either. I was kind of lost.
At the age of 23, I was leaving a professional cheerleading position for an AFL team, and had recently been chosen for a spot on the city’s NBA dance/cheer team. I also had a full-time job in the travel industry that did not involve using my cleavage as a tool to get ahead. I wasn’t eating well (or at all, at times), I listened to WAY too much Missy Elliott, I didn’t know how to defrizz my own hair, I was trying to resuscitate a failed relationship from the year prior, and living with two of my best friends in a 3-flat in Boystown. And if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change a thing.
At 23, I had been married for a year and some change. That was right at the beginnings of our really bad relationship with credit cards…we took a trip to Chicago for a film festival all paid for with credit cards…we got our first dog…I volunteered at the humane society all the time…saw Nine Inch Nails live…went to bars a lot to see live bands…my thyroid issues got worse again…my husband worked nights so I spent a lot of time with my next door neighbor.
That was a long, long time ago, and honestly I’m glad those days are over. I sometimes wish I could talk to my 23-year-old self and give her some advice. I don’t think she would listen, however.
Wow, 23 seems like eons ago. Only seven years, though.
I was living in California, working for the 49ers, going deep into debt by living in the Bay Area and drinking A LOT.
But really, I think I was finally feeling a little more comfortable in my skin, working hard on advancing in my career and enjoying my 20s! Loving the fact that I could drink all night and still wake up and go to work after 3 hours of sleep. And not feel like death for a full 24 hours. I miss that recovery time.
I also made some of my closest friendships in this time. The people from years 22-27 are my best friends. They were with me through the years where I really became the person that I am right now.
Although, now looking back at those years with my aged eye, I can see that I was immature, not sure how to act in a professional atmosphere and far too petty and worried about the small shit.
Eighteen long years ago… I was a newlywed and a mom (the mom part came first). My husband, kids and I were actually living with my mom, but getting ready to move into our first place. I was staying home full time with my four-year-old twin boys and it was frustrating as hell. Fortunately (for them), it got better.
My first teaching job in California. I was completely unprepared, desperately homesick, and in way over my head. My salary was pitiful and so was my love life.
Fast forward 10 years and everything’s better. Except for the salary.
Tired. Pregnant. Married. Happy. Hopeful.
Shash
Hi, this is my first comment eva. Your blog is da bomb.
At 23 (I’m 28 now), I was a wild maniac. I had just broken up with my college sweetheart of 5 years. Fresh out of college and having no clue what I wanted to do with my life. Most of my girlfriends were single so we went out Tuesday – Saturday and got drunk. I’d go to bed at 4am and be at work by 9am. It was a crazy time but I tell ya, some of the best days of my life. What a blast we had! Ahhh, I miss those days.
I did however meet the man who is now my husband at the end of that year. He was just as wild as me and it took years for us to both calm down and commit. We got married in September.
I was a social worker. I was getting married. I still thought that a broken-down car was the worst thing that could happen to me.
I was 23 five years ago. I was a work-aholic for a community newspaper. I thought I wanted to move away from home and conquer the world. I didn’t think anything could stop me and that hasn’t really changed. I have since moved away and realized that home is where I belong and I can change the world from right here.
At 23, I was recently married and completely self-concerned. I was broke all the time. I ate much ramen. ( Come to think of it, 26 is about the same on that count.) I watched too much TV and didn’t get enough exercise.
I can’t really remember a whole lot about 23. I think it mostly sucked.
23 was a very bad year for me. I don’t remember why, I just remember it not being pleasant, as, say, 25 was. Or 27. And hopefully 29.
I think I had just graduated college. I didn’t know what in the world I was supposed to do with my life (um, still don’t). Sept 11th had just happened. Life pretty much sucked.
I stared up into the sky a lot that year.
Arrogant, vain, and earnest. Not much has changed.
Let’s see. That was twenty-one years ago. Can that possibly be right? I’m 44. So yeah that’s right. I think I was still in college, living in a college town, drinking too much and trying to figure stuff out. Not really a whole lot different from today, except I don’t drink as much as I use to.
Currently still experiencing 23. I’ve been out of school for over a year and am working as a reporter for a local alternative newspaper. (And fully enjoying health and dental security.)
I miss skipping class and staying up all night and bar tending to pay the bills.
I’m probably too young to be getting married but can’t wait to say “I do” in November. Then I can go back to drinking beer sans guilt.
At 23 I was working in my dream job but didn’t know it. Needless to say, at 23 I wasn’t very observant.
At 22 I was drunk, confused, working a pathetic job and going through a string of 2 month boyfriends.
By 23 I got a new job, moved out of my parents’ place, had spent 6 months single, and started dating the guy I’m still with now.
23 was the best year ever. Out of college, living in London, drinking my face off, traveling here there and everywhere. Working temp jobs that turned out to be fantastic experiences– Sotheby’s, Parliament, various Knightsbridge hotels. All the fun of college except moreso because my only responsibility was making sure I could pay my rent and feed myself. I lived beneath a hovel in South Ken with heat and hot water only from the hours of 6pm-12am. Good times.
I’m 27 now, an adult who just signed a 2 year lease on her W. Village apartment. I have heat and hot water whenever I need it. I have responsibilities and bills and committments. Don’t get me wrong, life is good and I’m happy and all that jazz, but oh! To be 23 and in London once again.
At twenty-three I was starting my blog, wherein I would detail how much I wanted to get married and have a baby. Some things never change. Although thank god the boyfriend did!
23? Out of college for over a year, living in my own place for almost as long. I was working for a relic of the 70′s porn era, down to the overgrown mustache and corduroy suit, at a job I didn’t really understand. But that was OK because I hadn’t yet started to base my self-worth on what I did for a living. I’d been out of college and supporting myself long enough to feel “grown up”, but not so long that I had lost my alcohol tolerance. I was dating my husband and having lots of fun without too many worries.
My Dad’s office and mine were within a block of each other so we ate lunch together on a regular basis which was really nice except for the mentally slow maintenance guy who hit on me. That wasn’t so nice.
Lots more happened when I was 22 and 24, but 23 was a good year.
23…I left a man I was engaged to and had spent my entire adult life with. I was finishing grad school, getting ready for law school. I felt old and tired alot. And took myself way too seriously.
Also, I hated when people would say it was the “best time of your life” because it really wasn’t. Sure, I was relatively untethered by people or major responsibilities, but I had no finances to do much more than pay my rent and bar tab. And I worried that that was how it would always be.
It was also the year I met the man who became my husband.
aaaaw it was a tough year… I came back home from a 3-year long immigration, with no job, unfinished education and no money. I did fuck all- binge drinking, partying like mad, having no clue what I actually wanted to do in my life… all my friends were getting hitched and having babies and mortgages and I felt abandoned like some unwanted dog…
it didn’t last long, though I still have no clue what to do with my life. I’m just glad I didn’t rush into “being a grown-up” too early. being 24 isn’t that much better, you just kinda stop caring ;p and that’s a good thing!
23 was only a year ago for me! It was a good, but very stressful year – maybe what I should say is that good things happened but it took a lot of stress to get there.
We bought our house.
I got a new job.
I learned (haha *learned*) to ski on our vacation.
I was a flapper for Halloween.
I bought (a brand new!) car.
I started a blog.
That’s all I can remember. Apparently my memory is going at the ripe old age of 24.
Jeez, 23 was like 15 years ago for me. Wait, that can’t be right. Oh, shit, it is… Anyway, Arjewtino has it right: Arrogant, vain, and earnest. At 23 I was telling truth to power at the World Bank in Washington, DC. It was only later that I realized what a pain-in-the-ass, know-it-all punk I was. Now whenever I see a 23 year-old like I was then, I suggest, as gently as I can, that no matter how fast and furious those brilliant thoughts are coming, you might not want to say them out loud. I’m not sure that advice makes much sense when you’re 23, though. It’s only when you’re 38 that you understand that, when in a room full of older, more experienced folk, you can learn so much more by listening than by talking. (Or at least, that’s about how long it took me.)
23 was almost 10 years ago. Damn.
At 23 I was in a loveless marriage to a lovely person who didn’t love me, and trying my hardest to get happy. Which meant, getting a divorce.
Not so good.
(This comment makes it sounds like I hated my 20′s. But I LOVED my 20′s. Just those few married years were hard.)
I graduated college the year I was 23, since I took 5 years to get through my double-major. It was the first time I hadn’t been in school since the age of four, and it was both freeing and sort of freaky.
I had an otherwise-cool job that was ruined by an uber shitty co-worker, a guy so rancid I still can’t believe I put up with him for 9 months.
And this week, the year I was 23, I was likely quietly spazzing about the fact that I’d be getting married in 4 days.
I was a little more prone to The Drama back then and not quite used to the idea of being a grownup at long last, but other than that, I don’t think I was that different at 23 than I am at 26.
I’m only just starting to read your blog (thanks to the lovely Whoorl), and 23 was a big, but not good, year for me, so I thought I’d delurk. Everything happened in the 4 weeks before I turned 23. I quit my job, a week later (June 1) I got married, on June 12 my best friend got married, on June 16 I moved from Mississippi to Kansas (husband in the Army), on June 18 my mother committed suicide, and on June 29, I turned 23. That was not the best year for me since my husband went to Iraq 6 months later. I don’t remember much for a few months after my mom died. I laid on the couch, drank, and cried a lot. Then I picked myself up, got a job, and made some great friends. That was 23 for me (I’m 26 now). I’m not sure how I did it.
hmmm… won’t be 23 for another year and a half…who knows what life will be like then…
At 23 I was alone, enduring my husband’s deployment and feeling like my life was on pause. It was an empty, lonely, numb, anxious time that I don’t miss at all. I spent my days in our house in my hometown, where we were supposedly going to have 2.5 kids and a dog and stay forever. HAH!
I don’t feel anything like that person, but I hope I can always say that about the me five years ago. It means I haven’t given up on learning or changing.
23. I was a year into a marriage that I still can’t explain–I had known him 5 months, didn’t find him particularly attractive, yet I flew to Vegas to marry him 14 years ago this week. Thankfully, we divorced in 1996. At 23, I had finished college and was working in my “field.” That part was the only thing from that time that worked out for me. At 23, I was an overweight junk food eating, pot smoking, chain smoking blob. But by my 25th birthday, things had changed completely. Thank God.
I was high as fuck, in a garage band, taking Harvard sponsored philosophy courses at a community college in Florida, and making out with a Puerto Rican typesetter to the Smiths and the Cure. I was going to reggae shows at secret reggae clubs, reading Alistair Crowley, and publishing a Xerox Magazine. I was working at a major newspaper and eating snack ramen, living in a killer garage apartment and dancing at new wave clubs.
23. Hmmm. I was recently moved from one job to the next and had recently moved into what I would discover would be the place my husband of than 2 years would hate for the next 730 days. Exactly. I was still barely a newlywed, a college graduate and at the early stages of being a newspaper website manager maestro. The days. It was over 5 years ago. I think I would rather be 23 than 18 but it’s an option I’ll stick with 28.
Twenty-three? SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO? My heavens, I was a whole other person.
I was married to my now-ex-husband (thank you Jesus). I had just realized that getting that engineering degree was a total mistake, and was contemplating law school. And I lived in Texas.
Now? I’m a lawyer, a writer, a photographer, married to a great guy, with a fabulous daughter. I still live in Texas, though.
)
Great question!
K.
A month before I turned 23, my husband of two years left on a six-month deployment on his ship (he’s in the Navy). It was the first long separation of our marriage and it sucked because I missed him like crazy. But it was also a wonderful six months because: I realized the world wouldn’t end if I quit going to the school I HATED (I did, and it didn’t); inspired by a friend who was running her first marathon, I ran more than a block for the first time ever and eventually was able to run 3-4 miles and enjoy it; went to England with a dear friend for two weeks and had a blast; and I realized that even though I missed my husband I was strong enough to be apart from him for half a year. One of my better years, actually.
I was never 23. I have been about 38 all my life.
Getting to my 30s finally was a relief because my inner self and outer self finally matched up.
But if you insist on concrete details .. by 23 I’d realized that working with kids was great fun but couldn’t pay the bills. So I got a job answering phones, was trying to continue going to college and wondering if maybe I should just drop out and get on with my life. I didn’t stop completely but I gave up on classes for about a year. My early 20s were a bit of a choatic mess, but then, whose isn’t, I wonder.
For me 23 was a crazy year… I found a benign lump in my breast that they left in for six months which caused me to have panic attacks… oh, and I got married too.. Maybe that was what the panic attacks were about? I was working as a corporate paralegal and getting paid next to nothing…We had nothing, but we didn’t care, because we were beginning to build a real life together.
I guess you could say it had a Dickensian flair.. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..”
That was a whopping year ago for me.
Twenty-three was definitely NOT a good year for me. I had just graduated, I was working as a wedding planner which I did not love, I was living at home which I really did not love, I was recovering from ovarian surgery, I was lonely and miserable.
I made some major changes for 24.
Hmmm 1990… got my own apartment for the first time (a wreck of an in-law in the foggy Sunset District of SF)…got the first puppy I ever raised as an adult (she died in 2005)…I was one year into the boyfriend I still have (marriage schmarriage)… and one year into a ridiculously lucrative city job that fell into my lap, and led me to the one I have now- different agency, equally ridiculous money…I’m the same person I was at 23, with better handbags…interesting question, thanks for posing it
I was a cocky little pain in the ass, living at home with my parents, running a college radio station and sure that I was going to have Peter Jennings’ job in 10 years. I’d go to clubs, leave with my pockets full of phone numbers and CDs (“My band is big in Europe, really!”) and stagger home to bed around 3am. No longer in the music biz, now I stagger to work at 3am passing the bars that I used to haunt and wondering who I’ve become. I’m definitely not cocky, certainly not living at home (married, 1.5 kids), and no where near the dream job I once coveted. Am I happy? Ask me after a nice long nap.
23. That’s almost ten years ago. I’m such an old fart.
I was living in Vancouver, near the ocean. Articling to get my CA. Wishing I would meet The Man and have The House and The Children. Fast forward ten years and it happened. I was happy then, but am even happier now