This is one of several articles/mini-essays I wrote when I was in my very early 20s. I recently found them, filed away in a folder of keepsakes. I was just out of university at the time and beginning to experience and process the complexities of being a grown-up. I was also dreaming of becoming a writer of some sort – maybe a food or travel writer. Anyway, these are like letters from my 20-year-old self and give some insight into one person’s thoughts in the year 2000. Instead of keeping them on file I thought it was time they finally saw the light of day – so here they are.

Life as a graduate is an interesting mix of being glad to have shed the student skin, with all its connotations of loafing and drinking, and desperately wanting to return to something that you know and feel comfortable with. And of course navigating the shocking reality of having to get up at the same time each morning (early), with the disciplined regime of working nine-to-five.

It’s also difficult suddenly not being surrounded by people who are the same age as you, and who are all in the same time of life and dealing with the same set of challenges. There’s the possibility of being lonely; friendships become distant, people who you were friendly with at university now seem like mere acquaintances or even strangers. What drew you together in the first place – the fact that you were sharing a common experience – now seems to be one of the only reasons that you were ever friends.

It is an exciting time though, and also a daunting time. Exciting in that you finally get to do what you’ve been preparing for all these years. Education partially serves the purpose of turning out a work force that will be productive and good for the economy. Our whole lives have been geared towards reaching this point, this moment. But strangely, and somewhat tragically, many of us emerge from the other side of our education with little idea of what we want to do.

It may be a sign of the times, or a consequence of our consumerist culture. There are so many possibilities and almost every action we make is determined by a decision where multiple options have to be weighed up against each other. As humans in the face of such overwhelming choice it can seem preferable not to make any choice at all – what author Douglas Coupland aptly describes as ‘option paralysis’. We get stuck.

If we’re not alert to this, many of us will end up just drifting along, too overwhelmed to make the choices that matter for our lives, and instead existing in a haze where nothing is defined, nothing is certain, and life has happened ‘to’ us rather than us choosing it. However, the best path is there and can be chosen, and I hope that all other options will pale in comparison. Then it becomes not a just choice but a glorious inevitability.

© Alexandra Noel – All rights reserved. The Year 2000. 15th July 2021.