Jake, meanwhile, has been deciding the right time to propose to Jess, but he must come to terms with feelings he had for his high school sweetheart
The 25-year-olds circled a keg of craft beer like altar boys at a dice game.
With the help of our knowledge bank, you can choose for variations in your new neighborhood by:
But to zero in on the best place for you you’ll have to visit and schedule time to explore potential new homes in a region.
Oh, darn!
Adult Life Stages
Part One: She’s Leaving Home, Not Living Alone (Buy Buy)
According to Wikipedia Erik Erikson, the original expert in developmental life stages, said:
This is the first stage of adult development.
This development usually happens during young adulthood, which is between the ages of 18 to 35.
Dating, marriage, family and friendships are important during the stage in their life.
By successfully forming loving relationships with other people, individuals are able to experience love and intimacy.
Those who fail to form lasting relationships may feel isolated and alone.
Wikipedia summarized Erikson’s theory of early adulthood, roughly between the ages of 20 and 40.
Approximate Age: Early adulthood ( 20 – 39)
Significant Relationship: Friends, partners
Existential Question: Can I love?
Examples: Romantic relationships
Psychosocial Crisis: Intimacy vs. Isolation
Virtues: Love
The ages are all relative.
As we continue, you’ll notice overlapping age ranges.
The point is for you:
- Where do you find yourself in your own life?
- Which sets of dynamic issues confront you?
- Where can you find others facing the same kinds of challenges?
As you may recall 18-22 year olds don’t show up on demographic lifestyle dashboards until later in their 20s.
In their “Trying Twenties”, ages 20 to 29 years old, we find them renting in new neighborhoods.
Welcome to seven lifestyles in the “Striving Singles” category.
When peers, friends and generation members shift from what feels like one big age group with one common taste in music, fashion and popular culture into another phase which begins to splinter.
As a whole, out of a possible 66 lifestyles ranked by Claritas / Nielson they fall within the bottom third reflecting their status and affluence.
Where can you find them? Here’s a sampling.
- Living in California: Healdsburg, Eureka and Santa Cruz.
- Living in Utah: Park City
- In Idaho: Coeur d’Alene
- In Colorado: Telluride and Dillon
And in many more communities across regions of the United States.
Striving singles show up in Wireless Resorters, High Country Eagles and Permanent Temporaries communities.
Ages: 20-29
Life Stages: Striving Singles
Community Neighbors:
Wireless Resorters
42Y3T3, Red, White & Blues – WRRS Resort Suburbans (Healdsburg, CA)
48Y3T4, Young and Rustic – WRDE Distant Exurbans (Park City, UT)
56Y3T4, Crossroads Villagers – WRDE Distant Exurbans (Telluride, CO)
Community Neighbors:
High Country Eagles
45Y3T3, Blue Highways – HCERC Rural Cowboy (Dillon, CO)
47Y3C3, City Startups – HCESTB Small Town Borders (Eureka, CA)
53Y3C3, Mobility Blues -HCESTB Small Town Borders (Coeur d’Alene, ID)
Community Neighbors:
Permanent Temporaries
44Y3S4, New Beginnings – PTSO Start Over (Santa Cruz, CA)
But, wherever you find them, they still have common issues and nagging concerns.
Gail Sheehy says “The Trying Twenties” confront us with questions of how to take hold in the adult world.
John Hodgman in “Vacationland” recalls what it was like for him.
“When you live in New York or any big city, it is easy to fail at growing up. The city is designed to keep you in a state of perpetual adolescent. You never need to learn to drive if you don’t want to. “
Not only that, but it is so easy to trick yourself into believing you are your younger self.
“And even if you do drive you can go back to that bar you went to when you were twenty-one, and it will still be there, and it will still be called Molly’s, and the older waitress there will still remember you and let you sit where you want. “
Being in denial is the fashion, at least in Brooklyn, New York. (And elsewhere, too.)
“And five years later, when she is no longer there, when there is just a picture of her above the bar in a plan of sad honor, and you know what that means and don’t want to think about it, guess what: you do not have to. Because no one is driving home, and you’re back again listening to “Fairytale of New York,” which is still on every jukebox, falling into the same conversations you had with the same friends … and what you are going to do when you grow up.”
And after it’s been ten years since graduation, at THAT high school reunion, everyone wants to impress everyone else …
Think “10 Years” the 2011 film starring Channing Tatum, Chris Pratt and an ensemble cast that caught the essence of the Trying Twenties.
Heres the plot, according to Wikipedia. See if it sounds familiar.
Jake and his girlfriend Jess arrive at his high school friend’s house owned by married couple, Cully and Sam.
There, some of Jake’s friends start to arrive including: best buddies Marty and AJ, musician Reeves and Scott together with his wife.
Guests awkwardly greet one and another. Some are snubbed. Some are ignored. Some draw a crowd like they did in high school.
The night proceeds as everyone is faced with both their past and present selves .
Some have changed while others stayed the same.
According to Sheehy, during the Trying Twenties we become almost totally preoccupied with working out “the externals.”
- How do I put aspirations into effect?
- What is the best way to start?
- Where do I go?
- Who can help me?
- How did you do it?
Hodgman. As I stamped each page away, a growing sense ate at me that I was no longer becoming something – the perpetual state of college – but ending up as something. I didn’t know what that was. I had difficulty tolerating that ambiguity. And so I grew anxious and depressed. pg 51
The tasks are as enormous as they are exhilarating:
Sheehy: To shape a dream, that vision of ourselves which will generate energy, aliveness and hope … to prepare for a life work … to find a mentor if possible.
Hodgman. But in my case I had a real human therapist who was also a beautiful women, only a few years older than me. You can appreciate what a boon this was to a girl-shy nerd and narcissist.
I asked Dr. Woman what “Adjustment Disorder” meant. She said it typically follows a change in life status, such as finishing college or moving to a new city. pg 58
According to Sheehy, doing what “we should” is the most pervasive theme of the 20s.
Taking hold of the adult world. Finding ways to start putting aspirations into effect. Seeking help. Finding a mentor. Shaping our life dreams. Doing what “we should?”
Chris Erskine. The 25-year-olds circled a keg of craft beer like altar boys at a dice game. As if summoning some ancient hymn, they sang their praises for the older adults who’d had the good sense to choose something artful instead of something crass.
Really, we are not so different — no matter our age, religion or creed (whatever creed is). We are thirsty for good experiences and honest leadership. I don’t know if that is passed from God to popes, or fathers to sons, or just from party guest to party guest.
Whatever the reason, it’s a relief to see that our default emotions are mostly sincere — not papal necessarily, but appreciative of the greater good and the small, authentic choices that we brew into rich and proper values.
Virtue. Forgiveness. The good and artful life.
But what’s like raising today’s Millennials passing through their 20s and 30s?
Erskine. What I like best about Santa Monica, probably, is that it seems to attract lots of millennials, the young adults in their 20s and early 30s who I’ve championed in the past. They are like my therapy animals.
An amazing group, these millennials, especially considering they were over-mothered and under-parented all at the same time. That would seem an impossible, mutually exclusive way to raise an entire generation, but somehow America has.
I find the millennials spoiled, entitled, demanding, insular, independent, curious, strong-willed — just the sort of skill set you need to really change the world (many great presidents have had those same qualities).
And yet there’s that pervasive parental fear.
Erskine. Even so, the job prospects for talented twentysomethings are spotty at best. They move back in with us, then out again, then back in.

Project365: 233/365
I fear for young adults.
- Will they ever have a career?
- When they find work, it doesn’t pay enough to live.
- When they work overtime, they are afraid to put in for it, for fear of losing the job that doesn’t pay them enough to live in the first place.
Help.