Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl
Oops! I did it.... in My 20's Learn From These Mistakes
We unravel the chaotic yet vibrant reality of life at late late 20s. Far from the polished expectations of our teens, we'll explore the abstract masterpiece that is early adulthood—from career twists to balancing passions like acting. We’ll discuss the benefits of financial savvy and professional help in personal development, and the liberation found in realizing that others are too focused on their own stories to judge ours. Together, let's embrace the unpredictable journey of our 20s, one step, one breath, one Tuesday at a time.
You can watch the full episodes on our Youtube
Youtube - Confessionsofawannabeitgirl
Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl’s TikTok:
@wannabeitgirlpodcast
Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl’s IG:
@confessionsofawannabeitgirl
We unravel the chaotic yet vibrant reality of life at late late 20s. Far from the polished expectations of our teens, we'll explore the abstract masterpiece that is early adulthood—from career twists to balancing passions like acting. We’ll discuss the benefits of financial savvy and professional help in personal development, and the liberation found in realizing that others are too focused on their own stories to judge ours. Together, let's embrace the unpredictable journey of our 20s, one step, one breath, one Tuesday at a time.
You can watch the full episodes on our Youtube
Youtube - Confessionsofawannabeitgirl
Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl’s TikTok:
@wannabeitgirlpodcast
Confessions of A Wannabe It Girl’s IG:
@confessionsofawannabeitgirl
Hi guys and welcome back to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl, the podcast that helps you filter out all the BS in pursuits of becoming your own or the next it girl. And in today's episode we are going to dive into some things I wish I had known in my early 20s. I'm even talking a little bit about 18, 19, 20s, 21, 22, and some little bit of lessons I have been reflecting and thought about recently, as I feel like some things in my late 20s I maybe should have learned earlier, in my earlier 20s. So let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. I'm your host, marley Fregging, and I'm here to help you filter out all the bullshit and become the next it girl. This podcast explores the reality of what it really takes to make it out there. As it turns out, it is way less Instagrammable than I thought it was going to be. I'm still very much a work in progress, but there's simply nothing else I'd rather be doing than chasing my dreams. So let's learn from my mistakes and work together to achieve our dreams with more confidence, clarity and direction. Let's get after it.
Speaker 1:I mean this feels kind of obvious and I feel like no matter how many times people say this kind of thing to you, you're going to potentially think that no, I'm going to have my life together in five years. Let me tell you, your life will not look like what you think it will in five years. If you're 20 and you're thinking, oh, by 25, I'll be owning a house and married or have children or have this amazing career. I just will say that time has not really pursued or gone forth in any of those positive ways. I don't know, I just feel like predicting what five years looks like. I think we're a little all green in thinking what five years will actually take you to be in your life. So, five years from 20, you might still be figuring out what you want to do as a career. You could potentially still be absolutely dating, not even found close to the right person. I don't think 25 by any means you should be completely sold on everything in life with relationships and friendships. I just think five years. I think once I turned 25, I realized that five years really wasn't that much time to have my life figured out, and I don't know where this myth that we all grew up with that. By the time like you're 30, or by the time you're, you know, 25, seemed so old at the time. It's really not that old and life is just starting to kind of open up. I feel like you have just been in the workforce, maybe a little bit. You're out of college, transitioning from adult life.
Speaker 1:Here's my cue. Now. This is funny because this is what my parents did to me yesterday. I'm getting married, I'm 28. I'll be 29 when I get married. There we are sitting, you know I'll be 29 when I get married. There we are sitting, signing the formal contract for my wedding Venue, all the things. Sign on the dotted line, and not five seconds later Does my dad turn to me and say and my fiance and say okay, kids, we need to have a meeting. If your parents are still calling you kids, there is no way. At 21 and 22, you are considered an adult. So there is no way that in five years you're going to end up having this beautiful dream life that you totally pictured. Your career is going to be absolutely stable. You're going to love your job and love your coworkers. You're going to have all the finances in the world and have the love of your life and have the same best friends that you had at 16 and 17.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you, there is no way that five years is going to bring you that dream life. So let's just maybe relax a little bit and be open to the possibilities of where life is going to take you. You know, when I graduated college I said as long as I want to be in entertainment. You know, when I graduated college I said as long as I want to be in entertainment, I'll do anything. That wasn't untrue, but the more I went through life A, I realized a career in entertainment wasn't going to land me where I wanted to be in five years. But also it wasn't true completely I wasn't willing to do anything and everything just to be in entertainment. I'm just saying, no matter what you think your plan is, be open to change, be open to new things.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was having lunch with my uncle Unfortunately we were going through a tragedy then and unfortunately since he has passed but we were sitting at this breakfast brunch talking, and I remember he said to me you know, I admire you so much because you've always kind of known what you wanted to do and at this moment I couldn't have been farther away from where I wanted to be in my career and I was like, oh, thank you so much, uncle. That's really sweet. But I didn't feel good about it and the only thing I could think of was well, what did you do when you were my age? And he said, oh well, I didn't really know what I wanted to do and I didn't really know where life was going to take me. So I was just pretty open and I was like, wow, that's really beautiful and something I have to say I maybe wasn't enough open to in my early 20s, still thinking an avenue. Yes, I tried a million different things in career paths and kept it really linear, and then I let my career go really broad. The point of all this saying is, five years isn't that long of a time, and be open to what is going to come your way, because you just you don't know and lower the expectations of what you think you'll have by 30 or 25, which you know. I'm glad we kind of just touched on the job situation. This brings me to a lesson I feel like I have recently learned so hard. I don't know what I have done Actually. No, I might be starting to have a clue.
Speaker 1:I didn't set myself up correctly with a job when I was 22. Being an entrepreneurial spirit, if you will, which I didn't even know was words at the time, and wanting to be an actor and work in freelance whatever. I never found a, not even a side hustle, just a hustle to keep me grounded, to help me stay financially stable. I'll be completely honest that I've had a lot of financial support from my family, but I really wish that right out of the gate of college or towards the end of college, I had found a job that had either flexible hours or hours that was never going to conflict with me pursuing being an actor that would just make me money Like that I liked enough to always do or change format, like I'm talking about being a manager of a gym or a coffee shop.
Speaker 1:I really wish that I had found some job to fill the financial void of being an entrepreneur and I do think, in my opinion, this should be something flexible Coffee shop, gym group, fitness teacher which hence I have since figured out and have been teaching Pilates, something that you really like doing that does get your spark going, but also if you had to walk away from it because you do end up getting the dream job of booking a role on a TV show or whatnot. You're not going to like lose a lot of sleep about it. You're like this was great, I love it, I could have done this for a while, but if I have to walk away from it, whatever. And then the other keynote to this job that I wish somebody had really bunkered down and made me find right out of college is that anybody can kind of do it. I'm not talking about being in a personal assistant, because if then you have to be somewhere for that really important business meeting, for your writing career at 1 pm and your personal assistant job like needs you there at 1 pm, like you're fucked, like nobody else can cover for you. So that's why I think being a manager or being a waiter or group fitness something that's a little bit more flexible and like you could find a cover for if you know the dream starts taking off or you know you have a call back at 3 pm. That's what I mean. Pm, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1:I really wish I had taken the time to realize that this void was missing in my life, that I was not setting myself up to emotionally continue being an actor because I felt so self-sufficient financially, but also to just have something to feel responsible to, at least a few times a week. You're coming out of a system in your early 20s that we at least all went through until 16, and that's school. School has times and deadlines and things. And then you get out into the adult world and suddenly they're like figure it the fuck out, taxes are due on this day. There's no which reminds me I hope everybody did their taxes which remind like I mean, there's just so much less structure.
Speaker 1:And if you want to be an entrepreneurial spirited person, I do find that having certain things that I've had to report to at a certain time has kept me more grounded. It's also allowed me not to dilly-dally on doing the things I want to do, like if I'm like, oh well, I have all week to memorize this script and nothing else on my schedule, you know how long it's going to take for me to memorize that script all week. But if I have to teach pilates which is my situation I'm not saying needs to be your situation and I teach monday tuesday classes on wednesday Okay, so I only have friday, saturday and sunday to work it out, maybe thursday if I'm lucky. Do you see what I'm saying? It just takes up less of your fuck it time. You need to fill up your space to stay organized.
Speaker 1:I did have my acting teacher and dear mentor once say to me you do better when you're more busy, which on one hand slightly a little bit of a toxic thing to think that I should continue to add things on my plate to stay that busy, but at the same time she wasn't wrong. Like I do do better when I have a lot more on my plate and I have to kind of somewhat schedule my time out. We could go down the deep, deep path of what that leads to burnout. Point being is this cuts your fuck around time and you're creating yourself financial stability to keep doing the thing you want to do. And I wish so badly that I had started teaching Pilates or started working at a gym and, you know, had moved to a manager position just to have that stability emotionally, time-wise and financially so much earlier in my life, because I was so I'm so close to my 30s I'm like a year and a half off from my 30s, I guess you could say and I had to learn that lesson now, and it has been so hard to financially learn to change, to take care of myself and budget and whatnot. So do yourself a favor Get the stable, instable, flexible job Hosted a nightclub, I don't know. I've considered doing that as well, which brings me beautifully into my next point. I'm just freaking genius here. This is so basic. I sound like such a fucking parent when I say this Learn to handle your money.
Speaker 1:I absolutely did not learn to handle my money. It came in and it went right out and I was like, oh great, I have $100 left over, let's go out. Why on earth did I never learn to budget money? I mean, we could go on and on about that. We have a great episode about understanding financials, a few episodes back. If you want to check it out, point being where to start, where to save, where to get out of debt, all the things you really do need to understand what your daily life looks like financially. And then you need to understand what your month looks like financially, and then six months and a year.
Speaker 1:I know that with Instagram and TikTok and this idea that we need to buy a new outfit for every event we attend can really get to you and I can say it definitely got to me and I just ended up wasting so much money because I maybe felt insecure in a different place in my life, and I really wish now again in my late 20s, that this is a lesson I had learned early on. In my early 20s, I mean, I was privileged enough that it didn't bite me until I was much older. However, I do think it would be much more beneficial to learn to understand to budget your daily life, your house life and, you know, your fun money. I know it sucks to do that right after, like college, because you're like oh, I still want to party and I still want to have fun. Let me tell you, it's way less fun to be 28 and being like can we really afford to go to this really good friend's wedding? And I just wish that was something I had grasped onto a little bit earlier and maybe started worrying about.
Speaker 1:I was so carefree and then COVID happened and throw it all off, which, you know, brings me to another point here is that in your early 20s you don't worry about things that potentially maybe you're in denial about. Enjoy it while you can. This is what I wish I had known. Enjoy it. While you can Enjoy your early 20s, when you have that invincibility complex and you think you can take on anything and you don't think your parents are going to age and you think everyone's going to live forever, because that time in your life you start to realize is very, very short, I took it such for granted. Enjoy every minute of it because potentially you are no longer going to live in your childhood home, your parents are going to want to travel the world, your friends and you are going to change and that world is not going to be the same. And you know what? Also, even though your parents or people around you in your life will also age, parents change, people change, people grow.
Speaker 1:So this time when you were in between being an adult and in between being a child, where, like, even though legally not true, but you could get away with murder on some level, very short time in your life, and I really wish I had just soaked in that time and realized how lucky I was, because things change, people sell childhood homes and I don't know your age not that we're withering away over here you just start to realize that for so much hopefully longer, of your life, it's not going to be like that, so take the time to enjoy it and also, potentially, start to look at what you are in denial about. Start to look at what you are in denial about. I think I was always in denial that everyone would live forever and that we'd never sell, potentially, my childhood home which we haven't still, but it runs rent-free. In the back of my brain right now, what are you in denial about? Because when that invincibility contract runs out, that's going to be the first thing to show up. Which brings me perfectly into this I'm just rocking it with the transitions right now is you have to realize that In your early 20s, no matter what it is parental issues, relationship issues, eating issues, working out issues, grade insecurities, smartness insecurities, whatever it is those insecurities that you already have are only going to creep and creep and grow in size the older you get. I think we think that when we grow up, you're going to be an adult and it all goes away. I think the opposite is true. Whatever you have been suppressing about an issue or an insecurity is only going to get bigger the older you get, and I wish I had started to deal with them when I was a little bit younger. I could have saved myself a lot of times of crying on the floor in my dorm room closet if I had started therapy a little bit earlier. And you know what? I'm going to make a little caveat here about therapy. This is something I want to touch on in another episode.
Speaker 1:Being in your early 20s, you need to realize that your friends are not your therapist. Your friends are your friends. Your mother is not your therapist. Your father is not your therapist. Your therapist is your therapist. Nobody else can give you unbiased advice. Trust me, these people have been through enough with you in a way, not saying we can't share our problems with friends, but they're not your therapist. They're not going to mentally solve any issues you are dealing with.
Speaker 1:And I wish I hadn't trauma dumped so much on my friends in my early twenties and seen a therapist. So I would say it's naive to believe any insecurities you have when you are younger will not get bigger. This fun example that I think about is I've heard this said by acting teachers and whatnot that they talk about how people think that when they reach success in an acting career and they become famous, that all of those insecurities are going to go away Suddenly you're going to think you're the most attractive person on the world. Suddenly, everybody is going to want to date you and you're never going to be secure about anything else because you're going to be famous. That is evidently super untrue. That is when you start to become the most insecure, the most self-conscious and mentally suffer. And I felt similarly about growing up. I thought these things would just go away and instead it snowballed and they continued to grow.
Speaker 1:It's also fair to say something else I wish I had known in my early 20s is this concept I've touched on, I think, before the idea of graduating yourself. Like I said, you are no longer in a structured environment. You'll be at school at 8.15, you get out at 3.30, and then you're a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. All of that is done. So you have to learn to regulate and look outward and inward and decide when you have outgrown something or you've done everything that you could. I mean I think that happens a lot in friendships. You can graduate yourself from friendships and be like, hey, this friendship no longer really works. You can graduate yourself from jobs, from relationships. It's okay to regulate even, maybe, how long you want to live in a city and just be like, hey, I've done everything I want to do. I just got to switch things up and change it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I remember when I was graduating from LMU I was thinking, damn, four years was too fast. Because I went to a mid-school high school which was seven years. I was like four years is not enough time here. But if I had stayed there for three more years sad, dark, honestly not growing Talk about putting a. You know, when you were a kid, your parents would always joke with you that they were going to put a brick on your head so you would stop growing. Staying in an environment that no longer serves you is having a brick on your height and you're not going to continue to grow. So take the time to look inward and outward and see when something is no longer serving you and graduate yourself because you earned it. This brings me to my final point of today's episode, and that is no one gives as many fucks about you as you do. This couldn't be more true.
Speaker 1:Growing up and leaving your early 20s, I thought everybody cared about what outfit I wear I wore, how pretty I was, how skinny I was, how well I did in school, all those things. Let me tell you, nobody in the world, not even my parents, which I'm very lucky to say, gave a fuck about what my GPA was. When I graduated, however, I thought everybody would like to know that I got a 3.75, as I just told you, to confirm that I really cared about that. The point being is you think everything you do is so precious and so watched under a microscope when you are so young. Why on earth would we? I mean, this is the microscope. For those of you who can't see, I'm moving it back and forth.
Speaker 1:Evidently, we think everything we do is so special and so important and we are the most special person in the world. We are the main character in our story. Yes, tiktok. No, let me tell you, everybody else is also the main character in their own story. So let me tell you, the first thing they probably don't care about is you, and I have to say at the same time, that's sad, because we all want to believe we're special and you are special. You know what I mean. You are special, you are unique. Go live that main character energy, but at the same time, you're just here, just like everyone else.
Speaker 1:However, I do want to leave on the note of saying that it should be absolutely also freeing, that nobody cares that much about you, and I hope you enjoy the freedom of what it is for nobody to care about you, and I wish I had not been so insecure about what everybody else thought and I ebb and flow with that so much I mean. Hence the title of the podcast Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. No one cares as much what you are doing, so just march to your own drum and you know what. I hope this has helped you reflect on some things you wish you had known in your 20s, early 20s, or maybe are dealing with now, and I just appreciate you so much tuning into this episode of Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl and, as always, we'll see you next Tuesday.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. Don't forget to rate and subscribe to the show. As always, we'll see you next Tuesday. You.