Hindsight 20/Something - edited by Austin Beaton

Hindsight 20/Something is a chronicle of quarter-life crises-stories of moving to the midwest and losing a lover, losing your mind and changing your pronouns, renting a house with a urinal in the living room, coming out , moving back in with your parents. It's a book-shaped living room of honest friends -two nurses, an architect, a med student, two poets, a teacher, a software engineer, the depresses, the wandering, the anxious-all in their 20s. All here telling you that it's probably not okay right now. And that's okay. 

543Austin Beaton is a poet essayist 20something who studied regret at the University of Oregon, where he was a finalist for the Walter and Nancy Kidd Memorial Writing Competition in Poetry. His work has appeared in Boston Accent, Porridge Magazine, Angel City Review and elsewhere. He lives near the Pacific Ocean and gives nicknames. 

Hindsight 20/Something is a response to that conversation young 20somethings keep having at happy hour, over FaceTime, alone in their brain: 'I don't know what I'm doing. It's all so crazy. My job's fine, I guess. I want to move. I want a different life, but I'm not sure how to change it and even if I could, so what?'

Being in your 20's is seen as a golden time for many -youth, good looks, energy, nights out - there's a lot to enjoy and a lot to be thankful for. However, it's also a time of great uncertainty for many people - living away from home, outside of the structure that school and university provides, and faced with bills, jobs, relationships, along with the many expectations that family and society can place on an individual at that age. 
Here poet and writer Austin Beaton collects the stories of a wide range of 20-somethings - covering a huge range of emotions and providing a collection that's moving, relatable and immediate - and brilliantly conveys the maelstrom of feelings and urges that can be part of being in your 20's. Family, Love, Anxiety, Depression, Drink, Drugs, Religion, Work, Music - all are covered in recollections that range from a few paragraphs long to short stories of a few pages. What's fantastic about this collection is that, whilst the stories are clearly carefully collated, they're not over-edited - leaving a certain amount of rawness and individuality to shine through in each story, making all very readable, and offering a sense of immediacy and connection to the individuals sharing their stories and journeys with the reader. 
As someone only just out of my 20's, I found this a collection that's both relatable and assuring - with all the concerns and emotions explored here, I find it impossible to think that any reader wouldn't find connections and similarities with the content. 
Original, immediate and necessary -this is a well curated content that's appealing, rewarding, and ultimately comforting as it enables the reader to find connections and companionship in the recollections of others.