*Dani, this one’s for you and the girls.

I heard an accomplished media executive speak about her personal life journey last week. She was, at 25, almost exactly where I am now — a single, apartment- dwelling media agency person with a dozen side projects and a 24-hour-style life.

The focus of her talk was on the tent poles that defined her journey – those cross-roads or decision moments where her perspective changed – by her choice or not – and everything from then on shifted.

At 45 you can scan back and evaluate all the parts that have lead to your whole. You can say – “there, right there was when I really knew I want to be a ______________.” Or, “now that I’m through it I can say that _______________ gave me strength to know I had to _____________.” And, “If I’d ______________ before I _______________ I never would have _______________.”

At 25 there are less than a handful of things I can turn back and say something like that about. I have learned lessons. I have overcome obstacles. But the biggest decisions I’ve made so far have been what to study in college and where to move once I graduated. I’ve since stuck with my chosen industry…and my chosen apartment.

But according to the speaker I heard last week – that’s all about to change.

I am (we are?), she explained, lingering in phase one of the three phases of adulthood. From about 18 ‘til now we’ve been in what’s termed the “experimentation” phase. Life is, for the most part, one big test lab. Yes we’ve put some stakes in the ground – gotten expensive degrees, invested time in a given career, experienced serious relationships – but it’s all still open to negotiation. We are only responsible for ourselves. If an opportunity abroad came knocking, we’d say, “what have I got to lose?” If we were miserable in our jobs we’d say, “I have no reason to stay in this field.” If things got rocky we’d break up and our Mom’s would say, “thank god they didn’t get engaged.” We are transient. And when you’re transient you do things like buy four new pair of shoes in a week because looking great at several upcoming cocktail parties actually seems a smarter investment than an extra 200 bucks in your Roth IRA.

Pretty soon though, the speaker warned, it will be time for phase 2 – foundation.
Foundation is where you start to freak out about the fact that 50% of your friends are married and or own property. You have likely surpassed the age you were when your parents had you (aanndd your first sibling…) and yet you still can’t fit your summer and winter clothes inside your apartment at the same time. And so you start looking at that maaaaan in the mirror and asking him to chaaaaange his waaaaays.

Those changes of ways tend to come in the form of saving money, making strong advances in your career, and locking it down relationship wise. It’s not that you don’t want to keep experimenting or that you’ve tested all you’ve wanted to – it’s just that the group veers left towards dinner parties and away from vomiting at 2pm during a work day because you have to do those things if you want the rewards of a healthy, stable future. You grow up. Not because you have to, but because you want to. This, we will learn, is a good things because it gets us to phase 3.

Somewhere in those foundational years among all the saving for retirement and buying of matching china your gaze shifts toward the “what it’s all really about” – legacy.
It’s tends to start with having kids and end with heading up charity organizations, but suddenly who you are to the world you’re leaving behind becomes more important than who you are to that existential self – that 25-year-old self who just wanted to be happy and motivated and fulfilled by personal successes. The legacy portion is where we calm the fuck down and realize no one will remember how late we stayed out from ’07-’09 or how many cool restaurants we had on our “been there” list.

I was starting to feel like a real asshole – albeit in adorable new yellow canvas wedges — as the speaker finished up explaining the legacy portion of her lifeline talk. Seems it’s only a matter of time before the ghost of experimentation’s past is going to arrive in the night to burn my new set of summer scarves and show me what happens to girls who don’t save 10% of their pay?

Apparently, the timeline wasn’t the point.

We do it in steps – experimentation, foundation, legacy – because we can’t generally see the forest through the martinis. We’re here and now people. Followers of jumpers off bridges. It’s just easier to have one motivation at a time — especially when right now it’s about experimenting…

But the point of the three phases is that you’re supposed to do them together. You’re supposed to keep experimenting while building a foundation with an eye toward our legacy. Yes it gets harder and harder to overhaul your career the older you get. Of course people come into our lives to make it less “all about us.” But this attitude of “I have to pack it all in now before it’s all over” is dangerous. It makes us do things that weaken our foundation and tarnish our legacy – two phases we can’t stop from arriving no matter how hard we experiment.

No – the talk didn’t change my life overnight. There was this straw hat I totally couldn’t resist at Urban Outfitters that I absolutely do not need. But now I have one of those wise-sounding phrases to add to the talk I’ll give someday.

“I remember hearing this speaker talk about the three major life phases when I was around 25,” I’ll say, “and I knew then that I had to change the way I think about where I am today and where I want to be someday.”