20 Extremely Satisfying Ways To Live Your 20s To The Fullest

1) Drinking

Enjoy your hang-over free years while you can. Mix wine and margaritas and Adios Mother Fuckers all in one night. Drink whatever’s in the bottle on the table. Squeeze in all the cheap wine and beer that you can. Hit up happy hours, brunches and all of the two-for-one martini nights you can. Get the absurdly expensive champagne cocktail and the two dollar draft. Drink it all while you can, baby.

2) Working

Show up first and leave last. Take on the project no one else on your team wants and apply for the jobs that you probably shouldn’t get in a million years. You’ll reap the bennies forever.

3 ) Fucking

Get it on whenever you want—this is the time to figure out what you want while you have the energy to get down wherever, whenever with whomever.

4) Shopping

You’re working full time and have a little cash to blow, so spend it on bullshit before you have to buckle down and start thinking about a nicer, more responsible vehicle and– holy shit—property. You deserve the Forever 21 bangle bracelets you lose in a gutter the first time you wear them AND the Phillip Lim sweater that’s too nice to ever actually wear.

5) Spending

Pick up the tab for your friends—it feels fucking good to spend the money that you work hard to make. Your student debts are going down and you don’t have any big expenses on the horizon.

6) Dating

After hitting up Chili’s on triple dates in high school and college, it’s time to learn what it’s like to go on romantic one-on-one dinners with people you barely know. Dating is an uncomfortable dance you should try to master during these years.

7) Planning

You’re not supposed to be where you want to be at this point, but you should at least be thinking about it in general, if not constructing your five year master plan.

8) Staycationing

Save big trips for your 30s, your 20s are all about weekends within a two hour radius at AirBnBs or hotels found on Priceline at three AM. Make a point to blow it out with your girls at least twice a year, if not quarterly. A weekend nearby is all you need to recharge.

9) Dancing

Again— it’s all about the energy. Hit up your favorite clubs and mash up nights for as long as you can. Once 30 comes knocking at your door, your nights out shaking it become fewer and farther in between.

10) Experimenting

Maybe your hair looks better green or you like girls better than boys. You don’t have to know yet because you don’t need to know yet. Try everything you think you might like because hey, if you like it, that could make a real big difference in your quality of life. And if it turns out that prostitution isn’t your thing, then you’ll at least have gotten it over with during the first half of your life.

11) Listening

You don’t know everything yet, doll. Just because you went to college and have spent a few years paying your own bills doesn’t mean that you wrote the book. You may have written the eBook but not the book.

12) Learning

Take a sewing class, get really into Scientology for a few weeks, whatever. This is a time to be absorbing up all of the knowledge that you can. Bonus points if you figure out a way to make money from all of the useless crap you have in your brain.

13) Nesting

Make your place YOUR PLACE. At some point in your 20s, you’ll probably be lucky enough to live on your own for your first time, so make a point to really bask in that. Keep stuff in your apartment OUTSIDE of your room! Jackets can go in the front hall closet! You can eat cereal in your living room! You can turn your guest bathroom into a dark room, for fucks sake. Nest! It’s your little world and we’re just drinking wine in it, babe.

14) Laughing

You’ll fucking kill yourself if you don’t have a sense of humor in your 20s. If you’re not laughing, you’re doing it wrong and I’m seriously worried about you.

15) Crying

FEEL YOUR FEELS! It’s okay if you melt the fuck down because you don’t know how you’re going to pay your rent and to be honest, moving to LA is seeming really impulsive and like it was probably a huge mistake. You’re going to cry a lot before you realize it’s all going to be okay and that you’re resilient and brilliant and cool and always figure a way out of your own messes. But it’s important that you cry first.

16) Talking

Talk shit, talk shop, talk talk talk.

18) Dreaming

Hopefully you’re not yet jaded and still dream about things like getting up on stage at a Beyonce concert and becoming her best friend in the process. These are the years where you’ll manifest both the practical and whimsical just by allowing yourself the possibility.

19) Creating

I don’t care what you do, if you’re in your 20s in 2014 and you’re not creating SOMETHING, you’re probably a serial killer in the making.

20) Yearning

You shouldn’t be totally satisfied in your 20s. These years are the mere foundation for your best years. Remain unsatisfied in your love life, your career, your friendships and you will only continue to find better and better quality.