Willow in Winter

Hello, I’m 27 today, and I wrote half of this post on my WP app on the train to London at 7am, so please excuse any millennial ramblings.

When you reach 27 and you’re no longer in your early twenties, the excuse of “I’m still young to do X properly” doesn’t work anymore. You’re closer to 30 than to 23, but you still feel too young to be considered a proper adult. You’re supposed to be someone who has their life together, knows how thermostats work and how to argue over the phone with the electric company to reduce your price.

You might even see some people at 27 who are already parents, are married or have reached their dream job and know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. That might upset you, make you wonder if you’re falling behind. You might think to yourself, was I really born in 1994? Has it really been 27 years? It has, though, you just grew up slower than the people who were eager to grow up and become someone that knows how to clean an oven properly and enjoys talking about the best preschools in the area.

But if you’re not there yet, and frankly, you think you might never get there, you can join the almost-30 group.

The almost-30 group

I’m excited to turn 27, I know it might not seem like it, but I really am. I’m now part of the almost-30 group. You know the ones, they wear clothes that were fashionable three years ago and are slowly growing a collection of plants. They’re terrified at the thought that the clothes they wore as kids are now considered vintage. They’ve begun to wonder if they’d like to live in a house instead of a tiny studio apartment in the centre. The music in the bars sounds too loud now, and they also like to remind everyone of the time when cocktails were £6 and not £9. They finally know if they should get a fringe or not. They’ve picked up a new hobby to keep them entertained because weekends are no longer crazy. They haven’t been hungover in a while because the last time they were felt like they were going to die.

The almost-30 group is enjoying their last years of being in their 20s. These years should be crazy and exciting, but they’re mostly just tired. They still have time to travel somewhere, to live a few more years without settling down or having too many responsibilities. Time moves way faster now, and some days it might feel like time is running out, but for now, the almost-30 group is living a simple life, paying £4.50 for a hot chocolate without complaining because no one remembers a time when it was cheaper than that.

I think I belong here, being part of the inbetweeners (not the British show about awkward teenagers) but us, the late twenty-somethings that are too old to keep up with fashion trends, but too young to own a house. I like it here, it’s cosy, mostly predictable, but also kind of exciting.

27 songs for 27 years

To finish this post, I created a playlist to include 27 of my favourite songs and some that represent my life so far. It was very hard not to turn this into a Taylor Swift playlist, but I’ve managed to keep it to only four. I’ve been adding and removing songs for the past few months, and I wanted to add more because I’m still missing more favourites, but I ran out of space, turns out 27 isn’t such a big number after all.