The Grasshopper Who Sang All Summer (at Centrelink)

I'm going to be 24 soon.

In the documentary I have been editing over the last few months I came across a director called Mia Hansen-Love who is also 24. She has directed a feature film and is pregnant with a human child. Her latest film (of three), The Father of My Children won the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes in 2009. She is 24. She is a female director and she is 24 and is carrying a baby in her womb. I am overcome.

At age 24 I will be newly embarking on a stint of unemployment. This is because I have (somehow) justified to myself that I am "due for a break". I plan to play my guitar, bake cakes and find neighbourhood cats to pat until my money runs out. This I thought a grand plan until I found out about Mia Hansen-Love, who would also probably kick my arse in a fight, probably.

Mia Hansen-Love did have a bit of a lucky start. She was cast in a film at age 16 after someone saw her in the street and decided she had the right look. The streets I was hanging around in at age 16 weren't really conducive to such opportunities, although I may have scored a leaf raking or baby-sitting gig from time to time. Luck or "knowing people" haven't really played a great role in my career development, but I've worked hard and have done my best as someone who is both a "gifted underachiever" and "not tv pretty". However, it is at this juncture of my career that I reach a point when I must ask myself, what the bloody hell have I been doing all these years?

In another interview I edited, Kasey Chambers recounted her solo debut as a teenager, stressing that is was simply the best alternative to taking a day job that she could think of. And she's certainly not the only one. Countless successful and famous people have achieved their success in their teens or early twenties. Youth is a commodity; it is revered and fetishized. It is marketed and sold to us in just about every advertising campaign you see, and it is a constant threat to those who no longer posses it. While many of us will grow to be more intelligent, more adept and experienced, more comfortable with ourselves and to be more productive members of society, none of us will be more attractive or more youthful than we are today, at this very moment.

At 24, I will have less responsibility or obligations than I am ever likely to have. I have no kids, no loans, no debt, no sickness or family ills, no relationship and few social constraints, but I DO have the constant, unshakable weight of the burden of youth. Sometime within the next few years I need to have the career impressively underway, the material wealth accumulating, the relationship existing and solid, the children conceived, and all the frivolities of youth well and truly played-out lest they wheedle their way into my sensible adult life.

So the question now remains; do I make the most of my unencumbered youth or do I knuckle down now and make the metaphorical jams and preserves that will keep me through the winter years of my life? I realise that the biggest danger is looking back with regret about the chances I could have taken, but what chances exactly should I be taking now? It's all a bit much to bare really. In fact, I'm sure writing this is a big waste of my time. I should be going out and having fun RIGHT NOW, in a systematic and efficient fashion if I want to achieve a well spent youth by the age of 25. Mind you, 25 is when they stop giving all those youth arts grants, so I have a lot of applications to complete before next year.