Twenty Lessons from my Twenties

I turned 30 last week. 

I've long been excited to be in my thirties. I'm not someone who's scared of aging -- I feel like I'm moving closer to my "spirit age" which is somewhere around 67. 

It does feel strange though to admit to you all that I've been in my twenties this whole time. From the moment I left college I have either been second-in-command-at or running a small business -- I learned pretty quickly that my young age was something to hide if I wanted people to take me seriously. 

But here I am, coming out as an as-yet-recently-twenty-something. 

My twenties were rather tumultuous, and I'm glad to be past them. They involved all of the angst, decision-making, and despair that I suppose is typical of the decade. I made a number of sharp turns and strong decisions. 

I'm thrilled to say that life has gotten more stable, contented, and glorious as I've moved through the years. 

I decided to mark the occasion by making a list of the guidance I received and the lessons I learned as I made the many decisions that have built a life that I love.

If you were ever to ask me advice, it would likely be a combination of these thoughts. So consider this all the life-advice I could give you. 

 

20 Lessons from my Twenties

This is me at 20, studying abroad in Peru, high in the Andes. I was studying the rituals involved in Alpaca care, my unexpected introduction to earth ritual & plant magic.

My early twenties were marked by an impossible dilemma: stay on the path I intended for myself and head to law school (to work on agricultural trade issues and advocate for Mexican & Central American growers' rights) or jump the tracks and become a veggie farmer.

The decision was very either-or: there was no space for compromise. On the one hand, I loved research and research writing, and I wanted to work toward institutional change. I was a lover of academia. I was good at school. On the other hand, I could not imagine working inside every day, living for the weekend, compartmentalizing work, exercise, and friendship. I loved farming, for so many reasons.

Here is the guidance that helped my decision:

1. "Let your twenties be one big adventure."
-- Greg Skutches, my mentor/boss as a peer writing tutor

Law school would have been more of the same. Farming was something completely different.

2. "Doing what you want to do will get you where you want to be."
-- Malaika Spencer, at the time, a friend I had met farming. Now, one of my dearest friends and the owner of Roots to River Farm.

So simple. And yet so true. I could not have envisioned the life I'm living right now, and yet it's exactly where I want to be.

3. "What you leave behind is not what is engraved into stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."
-- Pericles, as seen on a motivational calendar that my aunt gave me

This was further bolstered by the poem Ozymandias, which I read frequently at that time.

4. "You'll know you've made the right decision because you will feel a sense of peace."
-- Temitope Adekanbi, a dear friend then and now

This advice is both true and relevant for every decision.

At the end, it came down to this:

5. Consider the texture and the daily reality of the decision.

I loved the idea of being a lawyer, and I knew I would have been a great attorney. But I also knew that being a lawyer meant: working in an office building, using harsh public-restroom-handsoap every day, wearing restrictive clothing, making sure my hair was shiny and smooth, being in environments that were cleaned with industrial solvents aka poison.

I knew I didn't want a life of these textures. I wanted a life in which I experienced all weather, and the textures of hot, dry, dusty, damp, soggy, humid, gritty, chilly, and cold. I wanted to be around dirt and textured surfaces, not smooth countertops and people acting like fruit salad is a health option.

For every decision, there is both the "idea" of it and the daily reality. The daily reality is extremely important to consider, because...

6. "How we live our days, is, of course, how we live our lives."
--Gretchen Rubin, author of "The Happiness Project" which is a very useful book to read for decision-making

This is a picture of me in a suit, age 21, to prove that I almost became a lawyer. I didn't hate it.

This is me, age 22, on the day of my college graduation. It's one of my favorite pictures of myself -- I'm so freakin happy. I'm on my way to be Malaika's assistant manager at Journey's End CSA -- not to law school.

I left college and became a farmer. What followed was the most blissed-out 6 months of my life in which my mantra was...

7. "Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise."
-- Alice Walker

At 23, I moved with Malaika to New Hope, PA to help her start Roots to River Farm. I had never been to New Hope and I knew nothing about it or anyone who lived here other than Malaika.

I wasn't sure if I'd want to settle here, and I knew that R2R was her career farm, not mine. But I threw myself into R2R and it captured my entire heart.

Malaika and I in March of 2013, age 23, putting plastic on the greenhouse. We were working 70+ hour weeks to get the greenhouse up in time for seeding. I was sleeping on her mom's basement couch until we found a place to live. By the end of the month, I fell asleep while driving... at 1:00 in the afternoon. My car was totaled, completely destroyed except where I was sitting. Exhaustion is real, friends. Don't let it kill you.

Age 24, posing with rutabaga at R2R.

As happy as I was working at R2R (we laughed so.much.) I began to feel more angst than I knew what to do with. I had not been an angsty teenager. But I was an angsty young-twenty-something.

I loved R2R, but it wasn't my life's passion. I am someone for whom work is very important, and I needed my work to reflect the true gifts I had to give the world. Veggie farming, as much as I loved it, wasn't it.

Malaika (and everyone else in my life) patiently stood by me for round two of Intense Soul-Searching.

I did my first formal herbal training in 2014, and I planted herbs at R2R to practice growing them. It was in 2014 that I decided to start an herb farm.

My first herb patch at R2R, age 24. My mom just sent this to me the other day :)

Now that I decided to start an herb farm, there were some serious questions to attend:

1) Where?
2) How do I access land?

I had no financial resources. Just a bunch of farming experience. And where do I settle?

The stories that answered both these questions are very long, but I'll leave you with the two lessons I learned while solving them:


8. For many people, there is a place that is the center of the universe. Find the place that is the center of your universe, and live there.

New Hope had become the center of my universe. I didn't want to leave.


9. Plants can literally make anything happen. You just have to remember to ask them for help, with empathy and humility.

The story of how I found the land of Locust Light Chapter 1 is so magical... I will tell it to you soon, I promise. It involved directly asking the plants, and having them directly answer.

Going to hang herbs in the loft at LL Ch. 1. Age 25, and a new business owner.

So here I was, triumphantly starting my business. I had also moved out of the home I shared with Malaika and friends, into an apartment by myself. I left the work environment that was the central pillar of my life, to work by myself. I was lonely.

I was also working two additional jobs to survive while running LL. It was agonizing. The first two years of LL were the most difficult of my life. I was the most depressed I had ever been. I was living what looked like any millennial's dream, and yet I was so, so unhappy.

Age 26. My life was beautiful, and I was profoundly depressed.

Three takeaways from this period of my life:

10. You are only vulnerable to judgements that poke at your existing insecurities.

I have made decisions in my life that others could find abhorrent. I'd already done something counter to everyone's expectations and become a farmer. I did not care what people thought about me or my decisions.

However, there was one thing that I was super insecure about: people thinking I was lazy.

At this time in my life, I was working so hard at LL, while also working a serving job and a part-time job at R2R. I would often get home from my serving job close to midnight and sleep until 9am the next day before getting up to work on the farm. My landlord would notice this, and he would routinely imply that I was lazy for sleeping so late. This slayed me.

I worked every day, and I was making about $1000/month. I did not have enough money to cover my basic needs, and the disparity between how hard I was working (and how much I believed in the importance of what I was doing) and how much I was able to support myself really messed with my head (it's like this for nearly all young farmers).

I was constantly worried that I was lazy and unproductive. To have someone else reflect that back to me ripped me apart inside. It wasn't until after I had moved off the property that I was able to see the situation with clarity, move past my Protestant-work-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism-ingrained-values, and actually start to rest.


11. The only reason to start a business is that you cannot be happy doing anything else.

Starting a business is extremely hard. I won't enumerate all the ways, but suffice to say that I am no longer a proponent of simply "following your dreams."

If running LL made me so miserable, then why did I keep doing it? Because I could not imagine myself doing any other thing that would make me happy.

I knew that, rather than give up, I needed to shift my business to be something that could serve me as much as I served it.


12. My community is what holds me here.

When in the depths of existential despair, what keeps you here? The answer is different for everyone. For me, it's the community of people around me. I imagine myself suspended within a fabric of beloveds, supported and supporting in turn. My farm family, my poetry family, my parents, and other assorted friends have held me here on this earth and helped me in so many ways. I am extremely grateful for them.

Alongside my continued career tumult was a constant stream of romantic tumult, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Here are two gems of advice that helped me navigate this:

13. "Choose yourself."
-- Deborah Streahle, mentor-turned-friend from college

I lingered for a while in a drawn of phase of "choosing" between a person I was in love with who thrillingly strung me along and someone that I was in a relationship with but didn't love. Deborah told me to stop trying to choose between them and make decisions that "choose Amanda." That snapped me out of my wallowing nonsense and helped focus on myself again.


14. "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time."
-- Maya Angelou

This is the single best bit of romantic advice that I've heard.

Age 27 brought John into my life. Well, John and I had been friends since I moved here (he & a friend started a veggie farm the same year Malaika & I started R2R, becoming almost-competition). But, ya know, it took a while.

Around this time, I realized that I could decide to not have children. Since age 15, I assumed that I would have children and low-key resent them for interfering with my beloved career, while feeling guilty for prioritizing my career over being a full-time parent. I did not look forward to this.

It occurred to me at some point that I could just not have children. This version of adulthood sounded much more exciting.

The only downside to this, as I saw it, was that there would not be a clear moment in which I became "full-on adult" and thus benefit from the ability to set my own boundaries over things like holiday celebrations.

I realized that I could adopt the mantle of "full-on adult" on my own and be proactive about creating my own boundaries.


15. Only you can set the boundaries you need.

This is the single-most important piece of advice I could give you. No one else will set your boundaries for you, and you shouldn't expect them to.

Being proactive about setting -- and maintaining -- your own boundaries will help to you craft the life you desire.

Along these lines....

16. We teach people how to treat us. (which is basically the same as...) What you allow will continue.

Again, take responsibility for your own life. Yes, there are some circumstances that you cannot control. But much of your life you can control. The sooner you accept responsibility the less you will depend on others for your happiness.

I decided to move the farm and establish Locust Light Chapter 2 in New Jersey, reunited with Malaika and R2R once again.

With the move, I scaled down the farm to become a large garden and switched my focus from herbal products and dried herbs to teaching.

Although my mom and I had fun traveling to different conferences, at age 28 I admitted to myself that I didn't love making and selling products, so I stopped. Things have only improved since then...

As I've continued to transform my business, settle into a healthy relationship, and generally improve my life, here are two ideas that I keep in mind:

17. Choose your problems.

There will be problems and nuisances no matter what you do. If you have a boss, that can suck. If you run a business, that can also suck. But you get to choose which types of problems you have. When you make a decision, keep the problems in mind. Which problems are you ok with living with?

As I've been moving from one era of my life to the next, I've been thinking about the new types of problems I'd like to have. For instance, I'm growing bored of problems relating to leasing land. I would now like to experiences the challenges (and joys) of owning land.

18. Replace your drama.

Humans love drama. We have this busy brains that love something to chew on and ponder over. I had lots of drama in my life, both romantic and career-related. Just before I started dating my current partner, John, I decided that I was ready to be done with romantic drama. We started dating, and a few months in I was feeling the agitation that can come with placid contentment. I wasn't used to it. I could see myself wanting to create some sort of "situation" but thankfully I recognized the urge and did not.

Instead, I realized that if I didn't want drama in my love life, I would need to give myself drama elsewhere. So I began consuming stories again, in earnest. Audio books, novels, poetry -- this is the drama I want in my life.

If you're trying to rid yourself of drama in one area of life, give your brain acceptable, non-de-stabilizing drama to replace it, or else you'll just keep creating drama for yourself.

At 29, I fulfilled a life-long dream and began taking ballet classes...

I, like you I'm sure, have felt the continued stress of our changing climate and impending doom.

Last year, I was dwelling hard in this. I asked myself "If the world as we know it collapses in the next decade, what will I regret not having done?"

The answer was the same as it's been my entire life: Take ballet.

So I did.

And I'll say, now that I've done that, I have no regrets and am much more at peace with our impending doom.

So, if you're grappling with despair over our doom, I encourage you to ask yourself:

19. What do you want to do most?

And then do it.

Here I am, fully arrived at age 30.

I felt driven to share this with you because, so often in our internet-culture, we only share the gloss, the magic, and the happy ending. And I suspect that my career choice can mean that my life looks pretty sparkly from the outside.

But it's been a long road, with plenty of angst and despair and lacking-of-basic-necessities along the way. It has taken much tenacity and self-exploration to make this path work.

Looking back, it would be easy to condense this story to make it a tale of chugging along and building a life.

But, as John says:

20. Life is lived in real time.

Two years of crippling depression sounds quick when you say it, but it's not quick when you live it. Starting three farms in five years is a short phrase, but it's hours and hours of labor and heartbreak.

So there you go, the sum total of life advice I can give you from my twenties. I hope some of the gems help you here and there.

And I encourage you to keep moving forward, with tenacity and courage and boundaries, expecting nothing, and living frugally on surprise.

With love,
Amanda

P.S. If you're craving space for reflection, check out our January retreat. And if you're craving support during the holidays, we've got some classes that can help.