Making new friends is one of the more satisfying experiences that comes along with growing up. You make your high school friends and they share a certain phase of life with you. A phase filled with acne and bad makeup and horrid dye jobs. They are there when you are feeling equal parts scared and excited for your graduation. And the summer before college, you become closer than ever. You try and keep in touch through college but different cities and different schools and different lifestyles just get in the way, and you drift apart. But you always come back home to see your girls in the summer months.

College holds a different kind of friendship. You are on your own for the first time with a bunch of other people who are on their own for the first time and it’s terrifying. You bond over late night ramen and cram sessions for the test you never studied for. You form a deeper connection than insecurities and boys and mean teachers. Instead, you connect over apartment bills and GPA’s and missing your mom’s brownies. These are the friends that are there for you day and night, and will stay with you through more than just 8am classes and campus flooding when you have your new tennis shoes one.

Growing up means making all sorts of new friends. You learn more about yourself and the world as time goes on, and you realize what is important to you. You watch your high school classmates get engaged around Christmas and announce that they are having a baby sometime in February. You feel left out, but still less screwed up than everyone else. Maybe you’re 20 and a college drop out living on her own, or maybe you’re 25 and still living with Mom and Dad because the housing market is too expensive. But you look back on years past and who you were in high school, or college, or right after graduation and you realize you are doing fine.

There is no timeline throughout life of when you should have certain things accomplished. So your high school friends are getting engaged or married, but your college friends are still trying to figure out which bar to hit up on a Saturday night. Don’t let everyone else’s life affect the way you live yours. Live to the best of your ability. Fall down, but get back up. Experiment, but learn what you are all about. Find yourself. Create yourself. But don’t put yourself on a timer. Don’t let yourself feel left out or left behind. If you woke up this morning with a sure notion of who your good friends are, that you love your family, if you got up and went to work or paid a bill or put gas in your car… you’re doing just fine. Cut your hair. Get the tattoo you’ve always wanted. Take a spontaneous trip. Try a new drink. Do whatever makes you feel good and stop worrying about what your friends or family or society thinks. Don’t stress the little things in life. You only get one. You may as well live in happiness and contentment.