"Now I feel old," I hear myself say more and more often when my friends and I refer to 'Back in the Day'. Now that I'm 26, I realize there's more to it when you truly become an adult, and that doesn't happen at ¹⁸ ! I'm now in the middle of my twenties, and I'm increasingly noticing that we look at things differently. For example, when you talk about 'the youth of today' and say things like 'where does the time go?' According to our dad, life doesn't really begin until your twenties, and in a way, he's right. It's actually the age when you do indeed know a lot, but also still have a lot to learn. That's why I want to dedicate this column to the challenges of life in my twenties and the things I encounter. Who knows, maybe you recognize some of it from your own twenties, or maybe you're just in your twenties yourself.

My boyfriend and I are already working on serious things like buying a house, but we also still go to concerts and festivals. We both enjoy focusing on what we want to achieve and what dreams we want to pursue, like the courses we're taking, because, well, our dad was right when he said "you can always learn something." Last weekend we also went to Elsom Open Air together, and even though my boyfriend isn't from the area at all, but from the province of Utrecht, he gets along great with the rest of my friends. He loves that "Brabantian ease," as he calls it. I always laugh out loud when he says you're already part of the group if you can just "drink beer and chat." The best thing about Elsom Open Air is that you can run into everyone in the Kempen region, and it's always "great fun." You might run into someone from elementary school, the old gym, and so on. It almost always goes like, "Hey, haven't seen you in a while, what are you doing these days?" And then you chat for a bit and realize how much your life is changing during this time, and that you're not alone in that. I love my Twenties then, but I'm not sure if that's always the case.