I’ve always been the kid wanting to hang out with the older kids. I guess it all started because I have an older brother that is 3 years older than me. I was always obsessed with knowing what him and his friends were up to and what they thought was cool at the time. I remember going into high school as a scared freshman and running into my brother and his group of friends in the hallway. All of his friends would say hi to me in the halls and I will never forget that feeling of being “so cool”, I was a freshman talking to juniors! Ever since then I have always been the longest one in the group, and I have learned a lot from always being the youngest!
1. You may not be where everyone else is in life at the moment, but you will get there just be patient
This is the biggest, hardest, and best thing I have ever learned! When all my friends were graduating high school and I still had two years left I felt like those two years were never going to pass. Every morning I would get up for school and wish YEARS away because I wanted to be out of high school like all my friends. Unfortunately, I was too young and hard-headed to understand how fun high school could be if I gave it a chance. I wasted the last two years of my high school career chasing all my older friends and wishing I was anywhere but still in high school, and that I do regret very much!
2. Don’t sweat the small stuff
Being younger you tend to dwell on things that don’t really matter all that much. Something may seem like life or death at the moment because you haven’t experienced anything like that before, and you just don’t know how to deal with it so you freak out. It is true when they say “with age comes wisdom”. When something bad would happen to me of course I freaked out like most people do because I was mad, scared, and upset, but my older friends would always remind me that it will pass just put your head down and keep pushing forward!
3. Life is all about balance
When you are young all you want to do is party and have fun and there is nothing wrong with letting your hair down every once in a while, but it is all about moderation. You have to work hard to be able to play hard. When I moved out of my parent’s house right after high school I thought I was invincible and no rules applied to me anymore, and all I was doing was going out and partying every night. It was defiantly fun no doubt about that, but I was getting anywhere in life I was constantly struggling to live paycheck to paycheck and I was having a hard time showing up for work on time. It took my older friends to step in a remind me of all the dreams and things I want to accomplish to get me on the straight and narrow. Now I am still enjoying life and I still go out a couple nights a week but I am now so much closer to accomplishing my dreams, and for that I am even happier than I was when I was going out every night.
