Your mid 20s are a turbulent time.

You’ve noticed some major disparities between your youthful expectations of life and its present realities – you assumed you’d have it all sorted out by now.

Maybe you’ve already passed through this phase in your life. Maybe it’s yet to come. But if you’re like me, you’ll recognise these aspects in your 20-something-year-old life.

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1. Age 23 is the beginning of the end

It’s all well and good for Taylor Swift to be all happy and shit about being 22, the world’s your oyster in your early 20s. Then you hit 23 and it all goes to shit, coz now you’re straddling the border between early and mid 20s, and there’s only one way you can possibly tip.

For your 21st birthday, you had a massive party. For your 22nd, you got a ‘woohoo!’ For your 23rd, you were lucky if anyone gave you a nod of acknowledgement.

Blink 182 got it so right.

2. You left university with the certainty that you’d completed the wrong course

What were you thinking picking that course? Oh yeah, you weren’t thinking, because at when you show up in Dubai and go for interviews that a nothing related to your qualifications and experience, but because it’s Dubai, you chance it anyway. 

Who could have known that’d be a bad time to make a life-altering decision?

3. Everyone else now seems to be in a relationship

And you’re just there like…

4. People start having babies

Although you’re quite happy to be out of the loop there.

5. You suddenly have to start thinking about your health

Gone are the days when you could recklessly endanger your body with toxins and junk food without thought of consequence, and still be a functioning human being.

But having said that, you’re still pretty young, so you don’t have to overdo it.

6. Hangovers

They’ve gotten worse, and you’ve come to the conclusion that they’re just not worth it anymore.

7. As a result, going out gets less and less enticing

The thoughts of heading to a club, the sheer effort of it all.

8. You really want to be in bed at a reasonable hour these days

And you’ve given serious thought to investing in a decent pair of slippers.

9. Your friends are at different stages in their lives

Half are settled, half are still acting like teenagers. They should call it your tweenties, amiright?

10. You envy your friends who do seem to have their shit together

And you’ll find there’s a thin line between envy and resentment.

11. You’re ceasing to be ‘with it’

To the younger generation, Facebook might seem like a lame, old person social network, while they’re on the hot new thing… and we wouldn’t even know.

Besides, we wouldn’t even want to use that new thing because we’d think it’s just for kids, and so the divide widens…

12. You distrust teenagers

Your lack of ‘with it’-ness has left you highly suspicious of those who do know what’s up.

13. A big chunk of your friends have fled the country

It seems a major part of mid 20s life in the UAE is having your social group dispersed to distant pastures.

14. Bills

Seriously, how much do bills suck? Not a fan.

15. Things you swore you’d never do, you now enjoy

You hated those family walks you were forced to do as a child, but now you actively seek them out with your friends.

16. You discover grey hairs

These silvery surprises are an instant reminder of your mortality.

17. Or worse, a receding hairline

Oh God, you’re losing everything you hold dear, while trying to act cool about it.

You start to envision follicle nightmare scenarios…

18. Decisions are hard

It dawns on you that you’ve officially been left to make all your major life decisions by yourself.

You get nostalgic for those by-gone days, where your life was so structured by others that you had to ask permission to even use the bathroom.

19. But then, you realise that other adults don’t have a clue either

No one does. Even your parents who once seemed all-knowing, they haven’t a notion. In fact, it’s slightly terrifying that you now know more about the modern world.

In the end, you just have to say ‘ah well’, and wing it through your 20s.