You know how they told us – work hard now then you can relax when you're grown up? Well, clearly that was a lie. Adulthood is not about relaxation, it’s just one responsibility after another; never-ending chores and no one to rely on but yourself! In short, adulting is tough and no one really warned us.
We thought it would all be about doing what we wanted when we wanted and if we wanted. Didn’t turn out like that.
They didn’t warn us that looking after ourselves and taking responsibility for everything we did, said and possessed was going to be so difficult!
At some point during childhood, we were pretty sure what we wanted to be – all that can change – several times. One may well still be looking for ideas about what to do with one’s life...when one is supposed to be ‘settled’.
Time was one could blame someone else when things went wrong. Time was one could look to others for help, comfort and support. Once an adult, you have to do all of this yourself!
You may want to spend your money on what you see as a much-deserved holiday… but after you’ve paid for rent, electricity, petrol and food and other necessities there's literally nothing left. All that adulting! It’s enough to make you cry
As a child, papa would kiss away the boo-boos and ma would bail you out in a financial crisis. It just seemed to happen automatically. Now you have to ask for help and help isn't always there when you need it!
There is a lot that an adult has to learn to do: time management, financial prudence, taxes, savings, investment, planning for the future. Strangely these are things that no one in school – or anyone else anywhere – taught us to do.
Sometimes we just need ma! But then there’s no one to hold your hand – literally and figuratively. Adulting is like that.
You realise that adulting is hard. You want to go back to a simpler, less complicated life --- the life of a frog perhaps? No one said adulting is easy. It’s like someone said: being an adult is like being a Quentin Tarantino movie: it starts out real cool, there's lots of cursing, it’s very confusing, everyone dies. QED.
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